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a couple of weeks after my mamma died, or rather, after she left this place in search of my brother, the one whom she watched die, whose heart she heard stop, the machines unwilling to send anymore sounds into the room for her to hold onto—after this cataclysmic ripping of my being, when i realised that i was now orphaned, that of the five of us there were only two left, after this, i went in search of something that would grow all around my grief, this very different gaping cave of a loss that made me feel so intensely alone, and i found a yellow rose bush and brought it home to live next to the falling-apart shed, that needs more tlc than we can afford right now, but is somehow made beautiful by the presence of greening things that dare to live in the shadow of its falling-apartness.

every day i walk down the path-of-broken-pavers to talk to the spinach, to hear the night-report of the rosemary and the apple mint, my rounds ending with the roses.

for a long while i wasn’t able to stitch, and also the words are still hiding themselves from me, although these ones have somehow found me.

i shall have to thank them later.

it is terrifying to lose a mother, and also your words, at the same time, and when your life breathes in a different country it is a weight when nobody around you knows the one you’ve lost.

i say, ‘my mother has died’ but what i really need is for someone to know her, to know the size, the complexity of this loss, but nobody does, so they say, ‘i am so sorry’ and then they slip away from my vision and i am left holding the grief.

sometimes the silence is so heavy.

still, somehow during the night, my mom spoke to the rose bush and i woke to all these petalled love letters.

my words have left me for a while because of the size of the loss that is sitting on my tongue, but these words found me and so i want to leave them here, just in case your tongue is also heavy with grief.

just in case you are holding something fierce by yourself.

i hope you like yellow roses too.

© Liezel Graham 2025