Writing with Juliet Iwelunmor

What we wanted seemed little enough at that time. There was something there, making it hard to eat. She was seeing a doctor. They will take a piece of something, and promised everything will be okay. Hours turned to days and days turned into more days. When we finally spoke, she shared what we had sensed all those days of waiting without saying anything. Her voice was clear and strong. She was now eating and feeling better. Everything will be okay. Only nothing was okay. Not in the days and weeks that followed. We saw a vulture, saw days turn to months, three months to be precise, until that 12th day, in the 8th month of that year, barely one week after seeing the one who first gave her air, only to leave with that air.

So now, this is how we learned to love, the angel and her mother, persistently shaped, like the delicate fall of leaves. This is how we came to voice, the anger and pain, persistently nurtured, about the fragile end of a life. We will never know the longing of mothers, those that nursed life, faced death with that life, as if in labor, though no birth in sight, just a never ending pain, a never ending sense of guilt, that they still breathe, still live, while death reclines content. They remain at a crossroads, life keeps moving, death keeps winning, never rolling back, only waiting. And though our days burn and bloom, for all the ways we stand, through fire, through dips, in front of castles or near schools, we are still tearful whenever we speak, not of the dips, or labor, but of a love that still never speaks, Angie, our reminder that each day we breathe is a gift, at least we speak, we love too, and we pray for one day when…