The Secret is Out
written by: Jo Curtain
my sister, who I didn’t know, hands me a photo of our mother in a nineteen-sixties summer dress,
vintage retro-cool.
our mother is our mirror,
hazel eyes, high cheekbones, dark hair,
our stomachs chain-stitched from childbirth.
I say, ‘she looks happy,’
my sister’s closed face veils her emotions like flower buds at dusk.
then I look again. our mother newly arrived in Australia,
pregnant, unmarried unknown
I realised the inadequacy of my response to my sister I didn’t know.
my sister and I biologically linked forty years separated, meeting at our mother’s grave for the first time.
do I want to hurt my sister?
her face strangely afflicted, feelings beyond the reach of words.
I longed for a sister to share the biological dysfunction from which I was stitched—yet
I turn away and escape to the bathroom seeking refuge from the inexplicable tear in the lining that joins siblings.
thinking of our mother, her secrets taken to the grave, I want her to know she could have shared them with me.
yet I know secrets are hard to let go
I look at the inherited features in the mirror. I see the aging face and feel her presence, not a ghost always with me.
- Years of Drought - November 16, 2022
- The Secret is Out - May 2, 2022
