Fudge

On daughters grieving mothers grieving mothers grieving daughters. Happy belated Mother's Day, mom.

Woman With Fork by Shannon Cartier Lucy, 2018

My mother is grieving her mother
And isn’t grief just another word for love
without a mouth to feed?
My mother has been grieving her mother
For as long as I can remember.

My mother was grieving her mother
When she told me that she’d always hated her.
My mother tried to suffocate me with her grief
And it was so sweet, I held it greedily to my lips.

It has been almost a year since my mother lost her mother.
She mentioned it when I called last month
It's the first I’m hearing of it.
My mother says I love you
I hang up before I can answer the question.

I don’t know how to love my mother
But I do know how to taste her grief
Like her peanut butter fudge
I can sit on the floor in front of the fridge and eat the whole tray
Furtively making myself sick
I can throw it up later just to taste it again
I can hate myself for it
And her.

I am grieving my mother and all I have taken from her
I am staring at my mother staring back at me from across the kitchen
Her hand outstretched on the table,
Like she’s asking for it back
Like she wishes she could take it back.
We are finally seeing ourselves in each other now that her mother has died.
Before I leave I ask for the recipe
And she gives it in her mother’s handwriting.