there was a clamour
in my soul’s anatomy,
a sixth sense enmeshed
in a daughter’s flesh.
I held her fragile hand,
touched fingernails,
like fractured shells
embedded in sand.
The lump of imminent
loss stuck in my throat
like a dry piece of toast
can never be swallowed.
I cannot forget
how her sacrifice spread
its diaphanous skin
across her web of bones,
so like my own,
as her soul prepared for exile
the last time I saw her.
Kim M. Russell, 9th September 2019
My response to Imaginary Garden with Real Toads Get Listed! with Helen Dehner
Helen is our guest host today. She tells us that September is her birth month and she is seventy-eight and still kicking! After a year in which poetry took a back seat to everything else in her life, she is back with a list of words which reflect her book club’s choice, My Dear Hamilton by Stephanie Dray and Laura Kamoie.
Helen asks us to choose three or more words from the given list and include them in poems of any form and any length.
writing in north norfolk 
Awesome, touching work, KMR. Those moments…
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Thank you, Ron.
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This is a heart-wrenching read. Something in the way you describe the diaphanous skin
across her web of bones, puts me in mind of my grandmother’s hands.
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Thank you, Kerry. That last visit to my mother the day before she died will stay with me,
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touched fingernails like fractured shells embedded in sand…such a heartwrenching image Kim. This breaks me heart, reading the entire poem. We loved our mothers so much and we miss them so much.
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We did and we do, Toni. Thank you. xxx
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I loved the sound and rhythm of “touched fingernails like fractured shells.”
Lovely use of the prompt.
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Thank you so much!
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Heart wrenching. The idea of “fractured” is reflected in this sad but beautiful write.
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Thank you, Viv.
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😊
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This is tender, loving, heartbreaking verse Kim — quite beautiful!
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Thank you so much, Rob. There isn’t a day when I don’t think of her.
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Yes, this fine post is full of such emotion and grief.
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Thank you, Robin.
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Beautiful, heart wrenching in visuals and emotion. I feel your loss and it joins mine at missing my mother.
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Thank you, Susie.
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Terribly sad.She will always be in your thoughts so she is always with you in a way.
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That’s what I like to believe. Thank you, Rall.
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Sad, and beautifully described.
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Thank you, Sara.
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I left a comment for you on Monday which for some mysterious reason never appeared. Your response to the words challenge gave me chills and a few tears. I held my mother in the crook of my arm as she took her last breath. A privilege. Thank you for joining.
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Thank you for your comment and for the engaging prompt, Helen.
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This really reminds me of my mother too… even though she had departed in pieces long before that last moment… it was still mostly the same.
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