Anita
Anita, my mother loved you.
You were a Madonna for your people,
but I never knew you.
You held Andy’s hand, in frou and fluff,
one quarter of the men who shaped my inner ears.
Another, who sang his way into our car,
One who spoke gently on my screen.
The last who danced into our home.
Tony, you speak doubly familiar, one half too rapidly
the other with a gentle English lilt.
A little less than our sweetheart Maggie,
but still noticeable.
And now that I know about you something I never did,
I’m a little closer to… Anita,
I want to ask you now,
when you hear me speak,
do you pick out the Australian in my voice?
It left scars on my sides, to be dragged across our lands,
but none on my cords,
they vibrate for your love.
Anita, my mother loved you.
In the winter, I wrap my coat around my chest tightly,
and rush down that strange alley surrounded by cackles,
these people loved you too.
Who would have thought you would have lived so little
and left so much,
even in a little girl who knows none of the words to your songs.
Anita, all of those men loved you,
and my mother loved all of those men,
and I love my mother.
Anita, my mother loved you,
and her emotions moved me, so Anita,
I cried for you, and all that I never understood about you.
Your 80s hairstyles, your swingsets in midair,
your frantic scramble towards something “better”.
If you had fallen further, what would they have done?
These people that love you, you would have changed too quickly for them.
I know a little of what they feel, but the way I feel for you is a riddle.
You knew to take your time.
Anita, my mother loved you so much,
so I’m afraid to seek you out.
Who will I hurt more in our meeting?
My mother, you, myself?
We will never converse,
for my fear of destroying that image of you.
I cannot let you shred the child in me,
who still sings sweetly in her sleep,
with an Australian accent.