After the Fall
By Nicole Fegan
November 15, 2024
November 15, 2024
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mother, i want to tell you:
the sandcastles were only an excuse, purgatory between you and the sea, where i could observe you wordlessly; an oyster shell washed ashore, limp seaweed dotting the coastline. i remember best the calm enormity of the waves and you remember best young me—my sense of wonder with the sand, you once said, gazing at the outline of a girl on film. most of all i still feel
your absence. for years, in tandem,
drifting slowly on a sidewalk simmering in the afternoon sun: i was your shadow, shrouded, invisible as you refused to glance backwards and when the sun set and i was gone,
only then did you turn around to make sure i was still there. what is left for me
now that i know i have only ever been artifice, extension? i have lived a phantom life of duplication and deference. mother, i believe you have never really seen me except, perhaps, that one day:
late winter, lake crabtree. as we sat on the dock where i had watched so many sunsets, i thought for a moment i heard your silence—still and present, as if i were extending the heartbeat i have spent a lifetime trying to soothe. breathe with me, once. see my body made of eyes. before i left, i wish we had witnessed,
even just one moment; even just the sand. |
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Nicole Fegan is a book editor, poet, and logic puzzle maker currently living in New Orleans. With a lifelong obsession with memory and nostalgia, she writes poetry that tries to make sense of what the brain chooses to remember. Her words have appeared in trampset, Susurrus, and midsummer magazine, among others. You can find more of her work at https://www.nicole-fegan.com/
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Author’s Note:
8/30/20, 7:30 AM: I was looking through our Costa Rica pictures yesterday, and came across this one. It was always one of my favorites of you. I love how it shows your sense of wonder with the sand.