Our Blindness & Our Knowing
After my grandmother dies, I walk in on my grandfather sobbing at the kitchen table
Digging up and spewing out the deepest private pain
Alone in the house that witnessed decades of their love
I debate whether to disclose my intrusion by banging the door or jingling my keys
Head collapsed in his hand, white hair unkempt, rubbing his bleary red eyes
His sorrow spreads with every hesitant step I take
Every molecule in his body mourns in the room’s sombre silence
I sit to watch him scribble, pen to paper, and ask what he is calculating
He is putting numbers to his father’s demise, when his gangrene-diseased leg was amputated
When he woke to the gruesome dismemberment and fell from the hospital bed in shock
Bleeding out into the night, he never made it home
He is gauging how soon until this grisly end may come for him
When my grandfather is buried eight years later with only one leg
I will return to this moment and weep at the inconceivable cruelty of life
Our intuitive ability to sense our own fate
Our blindness and our knowing
Ways to Say Sorry
Dinner at Mom’s now as an adult
I don’t let her touch the dishes
Scrubbing grime, remembering grief
The expectant hours she spends whipping up recipes for us in my teens
Meals she often finishes alone—alienated, defeated—enthusiasm fizzled out into heartbreak
Food lovingly prepared only to be tossed in the trash, dejection at her fingertips
Suppers scarfed down in strained sullenness, my gaze glued on my plate
She reaches out with anecdotes, questions, prompts
Trying to chip away at my armour, desperate for connection
Wondering with every frustrated breath
Is this what she made me for—to be shunned by her only daughter?
Is this what months of childbearing and an excruciating labour amounted to—more pain?
I am barbed wire and venom
Impervious, I withhold—knowing the outcome
In an effort to avoid conflict and spare us suffering, I inflict it tenfold
We are heavy, crumbling shells
Treading this crippling minefield where everything underneath is too blistered, too raw
Our kitchen is a daily bear trap I avoid
A prison of inescapable disappointment, of my repeated failure
Our kitchen is carnage
The hurling of silent shrapnel
Our kitchen hurts and heaves, sighs and seethes
A wound that calls to us, crying out to stop the gushing of blood
Our kitchen is where things inevitably come to blows
My mother’s mounting wrath lashes out against my outward apathy
When her quiet fury finally makes a sound
It is the deafening white-hot sting of her slap across my cheek
It is the unimaginable shame of knowing I deserve every ounce of her rage
It is the debilitating guilt of knowing I am the culprit
This is her undying love pitted against my eviscerating rejection
Retreating to our barracks to curl up and hide our tears
Drained of the will to poke her head into my bedroom
Only the murmur of a hoarse night through the wall
I know what she is thinking: I love you but I don’t like you
What I want to yell is that I don’t either
Years later, soap on sponge, dosing out cleanliness—seeking absolution
I am saying thank you for never giving up on me
Washing dishes in her finally happy home
I am saying sorry
Brittany Silveira
Brittany Silveira is an emerging writer from Montreal, Canada. With work previously featured in Graphite Publications, she crafts poetry and prose exploring love and loss, pain and pleasure—human dichotomies in their infinite forms.
Header image by Nsey Benajah.
