Still (Poetry)

There are still things we need to talk about,
discuss those times our fragile stage
held only us and who we were —
I thought we played ourselves,
unobserved except by one another —
you the daughter, me a one-time mother.

I’ve wondered since if I was wrongly cast
for love, as method, seems now to have failed
to make me real enough. Did you believe
a limb imagined wooden could not bleed?

You think of me as words without the flesh —
a script of bones, connected but no nerve
that runs between us, twitching, brought alive
late conversation’s one-way brittleness.

The younger you was warmer but you grew
a cooler skin for puberty, took part
in other people’s operas, practised lines
I’d never heard before — the language fierce
and heartless as the company you chose.

And you’re their star, their diva, centre of
every piece within a repertoire
that will not stretch your talents very far —
they’ll keep you mediocre, smother fire.

Your old dressing room’s still vacant, echoing
to our last scene, ad-libbed, before you left
on life’s long tour of venues and your note —
a paper dagger, sheathed, its crumpled point
so long denied — still carefully unread.