Saint of Mothers

Saint of mothers and mother-figures, matriarchs. Saint of the family. Saint of nurses, caregivers, nursemaids. Saint of beggars and drifters. Saint of lost souls. Saint of grievers and mourners too. Saint of spiders and weavers and spinners.

We watched her die in a hospital bed, surrounded by her kids. She was so thin, her skin turning yellow. I caught her eye, her lying there on the hospital bed, and I needed to go sit in my car and smoke after.

There’s a kind of centipede that upon the hatching of its clutch will wrap its body around its pale wriggling brood in a ball, a nest, to protect them. As they grow, getting stronger and hungrier, her strength fades, and she dies. Her offspring’s first meal is her corpse.

I returned three days later, after she had passed. I managed to steal the pillowcase from her bed, it still had the unmistakable harmonisation of power about it, that scrap of cheap synthetic fabric that still held a trace of her last breath. Power guided me. Power told me what to do. The mother Saint, avatar of sacrifice and regret and longing, bound to me. I swear my intentions were good, at least at the start, I didn’t mean for it to get so far.