at the florence nightingale museum
I hate all the people who still have mothers.
1.
I am here to shoulder the grief, a year later. I am here to
refresh my lexicon, as I tell my students. I am here to change my language.
In London, at the blood bank, in the middle of St Thomas’ hospital,
where an ambulance stutters silent, docks at a concrete pier, is her
museum. A museum my mother never visited,
in a city that has nothing to do with her.
1.
I am here to shoulder the grief, a year later. I am here to
refresh my lexicon, as I tell my students. I am here to change my language.
In London, at the blood bank, in the middle of St Thomas’ hospital,
where an ambulance stutters silent, docks at a concrete pier, is her
museum. A museum my mother never visited,
in a city that has nothing to do with her.
2.
I rip up the notebooks scrawled in the midst of the first deep grief and retype and tell myself that I am now more dispassionate. Yet I want a record of the words. Looking over my notes written in class on a James Joyce essay we read last spring. “How can my mother be dead be dead be dead” I wrote and wrote and wrote.
3.
In Sutaru, on the battlefields, Florence bandaged salved saved wound and wound
white cloth around a wound
In those days hospitals were where people went to die—
4.
My mother refused the hospital—
Shoulder, I write during my class, thinking of my mother’s body
at the funeral home when I should have clipped a piece of her hair.
Why did I not have scissors in my pocket?
Grief: to make heavy to wear a necklace burdening the throat
to lift the heft of a baby her bare legs gripping your mother’s hips
breath pressed out of your body
5.
Repeated dream after my mother dies where I sleep in a box of dragonflies the size of
palms. Perhaps they came from my own body. Or hers.
6.
My mother refused—
Care: A burdened state of mind, as that arising from heavy responsibilities; worry.
Mental suffering; grief. An object or source of worry, attention, or solicitude:
We did not know she was dying. Never saw
blue and white pad, laid on the bed then the butterfly needle, its delicate
hooped wire, IV taped to a forearm’s pale skin.
7.
Dry nurse. Wet nurse. Nurse: a worker that attends to the young in a colony of insects.
8.
How much I want to believe: charge, custody, keeping, supervision, trust
in watching, guarding, or overseeing.
and yet my mother died suddenly on the couch
I never sat by the bed long enough all night while she slept or not wondering
would I be able—
9.
At the museum I learn that Florence took care of her collections:
A box containing seeds and plant specimens that Florence collected in Greece along with
her notes on exactly where she found them.
A fly swatter. She used oil to protect against insect bites. She also wore green sunglasses
and packed a lined umbrella as well as a small dingy for her trip to Europe.
Objects that will now forever make me sad:
Salem 100s.
Velvet dollhouse curtains she sewed with extras from my Christmas dress.
Newark airport.
Her silver mixing bowl.
Her French books.
My daughters.
Her handwriting.
10.
She can’t breathe did we not give her the close attention did we not know she can’t
breathe
A door slammed shut. A lung.
How I kept my own collection:
Skirt I wore when I came home, thrown in the backyard trash.
Back of a fentanyl patch, fly-paper sticky
Pills to grind under my heel as I might slam out the door
11.
a lung—this taking care, this hand on a back, over a shoulder, this surgical glove,
shiver of silver and green—
In Sutaru, on the battlefields, Florence bandaged salved saved wound and wound
white cloth around a wound
In those days hospitals were where people went to die—
4.
My mother refused the hospital—
Shoulder, I write during my class, thinking of my mother’s body
at the funeral home when I should have clipped a piece of her hair.
Why did I not have scissors in my pocket?
Grief: to make heavy to wear a necklace burdening the throat
to lift the heft of a baby her bare legs gripping your mother’s hips
breath pressed out of your body
5.
Repeated dream after my mother dies where I sleep in a box of dragonflies the size of
palms. Perhaps they came from my own body. Or hers.
6.
My mother refused—
Care: A burdened state of mind, as that arising from heavy responsibilities; worry.
Mental suffering; grief. An object or source of worry, attention, or solicitude:
We did not know she was dying. Never saw
blue and white pad, laid on the bed then the butterfly needle, its delicate
hooped wire, IV taped to a forearm’s pale skin.
7.
Dry nurse. Wet nurse. Nurse: a worker that attends to the young in a colony of insects.
8.
How much I want to believe: charge, custody, keeping, supervision, trust
in watching, guarding, or overseeing.
and yet my mother died suddenly on the couch
I never sat by the bed long enough all night while she slept or not wondering
would I be able—
9.
At the museum I learn that Florence took care of her collections:
A box containing seeds and plant specimens that Florence collected in Greece along with
her notes on exactly where she found them.
A fly swatter. She used oil to protect against insect bites. She also wore green sunglasses
and packed a lined umbrella as well as a small dingy for her trip to Europe.
Objects that will now forever make me sad:
Salem 100s.
Velvet dollhouse curtains she sewed with extras from my Christmas dress.
Newark airport.
Her silver mixing bowl.
Her French books.
My daughters.
Her handwriting.
10.
She can’t breathe did we not give her the close attention did we not know she can’t
breathe
A door slammed shut. A lung.
How I kept my own collection:
Skirt I wore when I came home, thrown in the backyard trash.
Back of a fentanyl patch, fly-paper sticky
Pills to grind under my heel as I might slam out the door
11.
a lung—this taking care, this hand on a back, over a shoulder, this surgical glove,
shiver of silver and green—
|
Georges Seurat. The Artist’s Mother, 1882-1883. The Metropolitan Museum of Art.
|
Nicole Cooley is the author of six books of poems, most recently Of Marriage (Alice James Books, 2018) and Girl after Girl after Girl (LSU Press, 2017). She is the director of the MFA Program at Queens College-City University of New York.