Dear Lorraine

I found one of your letters, the guidelines 
on the airmail-ruled Croxley pad ignored.

‘I am woman hear me ROAR’
defied the narrow, pale blue corridors.

Words I wanted my mother to say, but she 
couldn’t. You could. Thank God you could.

My mother only yelled at me from my lounge,
‘Remember Lorraine? She’s dead.’

What she really meant to say was, ‘Sweetheart, 
our old next-door neighbour, who was more

mother to you than me, she died.’
Do you remember? The day she walked me over

to you, first blood between my thighs? You saved
me with a Tampax and welcomed me with rites

into a womanhood my mother couldn’t take 
me to, so foreign it was to her own life.

We don’t blame her though, right?
You taught me how to be a woman.

The hours on your concrete steps
where you told me what birds really were

and what the bees had to do with them.
Where we sunned our legs and you smoked

your ‘cancer sticks’ and taught me the power
of words, like fuck and boundaries and you are loved.

You are loved.

Why didn’t you tell me you were sick? So I could
write to you with words outside the lines.

To tell you, you are loved. 
I thought I still had time.

---

Devoted to living a life of rest, ritual, and writing and rewriting the stories we tell ourselves, Steph Le Gros, mama to three little humans, resides in Nelson.