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Fiona Sinclair

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Inherited friend

News of mother’s death reached her
like the last sensation of a local Marilyn.
Slipping into the back pew on the first bars
of ‘The lord is my shepherd’,
she left as the curtains touched.
Then I receive her letter’s extended hand.
So on chintz sofa holding china cups,
I listen to her daughters’ dazzling Dallas lives,
she skim reads my news like a local paper,
then riffs on her past until suddenly the electric shock
of her casual your mother …

Thirty years before, when uncle unilaterally decided
he’d married the wrong sister,
civil war in my family; grandmother and aunt
bombarding mum’s friends with telephone salvos
until I don’t want to be involved any more ,
despite mother’s boozy begging calls.

So I am on a bed of nails
as she fondly recounts how mother would nurse
their Chihuahua on her lap all afternoon,
and when she departed,
the little dog smelt foppishly of Chanel no 5 .

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