Mother.
by Sascha Elk

You cradle me, vacant. I don’t know you’re only husk of who you were before.



Lately, your mind has been wandering; looking towards easier times, and looking back, mourning them. Mourning yourself—the woman who’s been replaced by the mother.

He brings you tea and toast; steam rising in the stark morning light. You thank him, but no smile breaches your lips. There’s no warmth. You’re too tired to feign love, softness. You reserve that energy for me, because you know I need it.

Will this ever end, you wonder. It seems infinite now. An Impossible struggle. It feels almost futile to try and enjoy it, but that’s what everyone keeps telling you to do.

Today you’re painting my room, from dandelion yellow to duck egg blue. Perhaps that will make you want to be in here—this small, awkward room you feel so incurably detached from. I watch from a mat on the floor, fists plugging my gummy mouth, eyes wide, kicking. He comes in and offers help, but you want to do this, for me, and for you. He gets down on the floor and tickles my tummy, but I don’t smile much, and you point that out again.

What if it’s your fault? What if you weren’t happy enough when I was born and now I’m imprinted with melancholy?

Don’t be silly.

That’s what he always says when you voice a concern, and every time he dismisses your worries you retreat further and further, back inside that hard shell you live in, deep inside your mind.

As I grow, your worries shift. Should you have another child—someone for me to play with? Perhaps if my attention wasn’t solely on you, you wouldn’t feel so suffocated. 

You’re busy trying to keep your art alive. You spend hours in your studio, hunched over canvases and watercolour paints smudged and dried on ceramic palettes that I peel off and squish between dirty fingers. African animals, elegant numbers in black and gold. Keepsakes for parents to place in their children’s rooms, to mark the milestones. The first weeks, the first Christmas, the first tooth, the first year. All the things you couldn’t find joy in when they were mine, and you wonder what the people who buy your works would think if they knew the hypocrisy they’re painted with.

I’m right here, and yet you’re lonely. So am I. And so is he.

The sibling you wanted for me never comes. You’re sad, and relieved. 

You take me to the beach. The wind is harsh and cold, the air laced with salt and sand that stings my cheeks. I climb the ochre rocks, watching as you walk in the shallow waves that lick your ankles and splash your calves, your gaze fixed on the line between sea and sky. I can feel your restlessness. Even in these peaceful moments I sense your mind, elsewhere—out there on that horizon, wanting for some other place, or perhaps, some other time.

You’re never here, with me.

You’re older now. He is gone, lost long ago to wrong words and stubborn silences. I turn twenty-one, and at my birthday dinner you give a speech. You tell me I’m on my own now, that I’m a grown woman, and it’s time I made it in the world without you. My greatest surprise is that you think that’s what I haven’t already been doing.

We stop moving through this life together. You get what you’ve wanted since I was born: solitude. I don’t need you now, you think. You can be free, enjoy your life again, finally. You no longer feel the guilt you felt when I was little; you’ve moved beyond it—like it was all just a bad dream, forgotten.

I cradle her, vacant. My mind wanders, looking toward easier times, and looking back, mourning them.

And I think I understand you now. 

It’s arduous, all-consuming. The cold, tired mornings and endless dark nights. Bone aching exhaustion from the moment it begins. Relentless. Harrowing. Thankless. It could have swallowed you whole, but you fought it. You clawed your way out of the abyss, and chose to save your own life. You couldn’t have known this journey wasn’t meant for you before you stepped onto the path.

But it was meant for me.

She stirs, her tiny body moving against mine, on the outside now, like a fish out of water, and I return to her. Here. Now.

He brings me tea and toast; steam rising in the stark morning light.

And I smile.

Sascha Elk is an emerging writer from the Mornington Peninsula. Inspired by struggles of the head and heart, she loves exploring truths of the human condition through fiction. Outside writing, her passions are film, music and nature. She recently completed her third major manuscript, and is enjoying country life with her husband and two small children.