The poems are:
My sincere thanks to the editors of Morphrog for publishing these poems.
You can read them here:
On returning to the quiet joy of reading, one discovers that some stories are not only theirs but yours too. Annie Ernaux’s A Woman’s Story was one of those stories—hers and mine.
It was one of the days I visited my mom at the convalescent hospital for the elderly when I started reading this story, sitting by her bedside. Call it providence if you are religious or coincidence otherwise, but I wasn’t expecting it to become my story as well about my mom, who had been hospitalized since her stroke in January of this year. It was as though Ernaux was speaking to me as a daughter to daughter about her mom and mine, collapsing time and place and the cultural and social differences between us. No wonder I wanted to finish reading it at one sitting.
This book is not of a certain literary genre. To call it a biography of her childhood and her mom’s influence on her misses the point of why it took her a year to finish the book. It’s much more than that. The absence of her mom made the author realize her mom’s place in her memory. Her mother was the first witness to Ernaux entering the world naked, and later, to her becoming the woman she is. It’s both a biological and an existential view of the author’s raison d’être. That there is no longer anyone on the other side of the first relationship, which has ended forever. It aches. It lingers. It evanesces. And before all of this will vanish into the ether, Ernaux lives to tell about the presence that was so familiar with her being that not seeing, hearing, and feeling it is painful to bear without letting it take the form of writing because writing is personal yet public, pensive but assertive, and quiet but powerful.
I can understand the kind of ache the author felt after her mother’s death. Whether you loved her or not, you would never see her in life again. She may live in your vision of the past, but her person as a presence does not exist in this world. And that realization of forever disappearance would throw you into the abyss, stifled, blinded, and muffled—by the ineffable sorrow mixed with mystical longing.
I think about my mom and me. What if she leaves this world soon—tomorrow, the day after, or anytime soon? Oftentimes, I wake up with indescribable terror at the thought that soon I will lose her to eternity if I breathe, like a panic attack. And it dawns on me that it is this feeling of detachment from the relationship, as the bond between mom and daughter is severed forever.
Tonight, the sea is a sheet of glass,
holding the moon’s timid face.
“Don’t look at me—
but don’t look away.”
I lean toward her under the water,
my face bruised with sadness,
trembling beside hers
in awe of still beauty.
Two girls gaze back at me—
sheepish, curious, luminescent:
one made of ache,
one made of flame.
Her eyes—two diamonds
cut from the tears of indifference.
Drops fall into the lake,
ricocheting sorrow into smile.
I reach to touch their faces,
but their reflections dissolve—
a shimmer undone by my hand.
I try to gather the pieces,
but the more I gather,
the deeper they sink
to the bottom of the water.
I lost the only friend
who looked like me.
Now my face alone—
a ghost-girl drowning in her own reflection,
born from love, but never for it.
If you like this poem, you can support my writing at Ko-fi:
Painting: Claude Monet, 1875. Public domain via National Gallery of Art.
I keep it to myself, and myself—like a girl with no lips.
And so, no one sees me. I’m forgotten, forsaken.
Still, I am flesh and bone—the quiet soul, the raging spirit.
Recognition is not my thing, or so I try to beguile.
But the crying heart longs for it, like a flower needs water.
The calm sea always hides the surge of roaring waves.
I wanted to be someone’s one—even if he knows me not.
I wanted to be a lover’s lover—even if he is someone’s one.
When I shared what I felt, with streams of salt-sad fire,
it was too much for them. They turned away.
So I stopped confessing it altogether, evermore.
I wish for nothing now—not tomorrow, not ever.
With no expectations, I let the days pass—and fade away.
What’s a part of my daily life that I often take for granted?
I have begun noticing things I took for granted before, such as the following:1. Waking up every morning: I now realize that night is when our bodies either revolt or rest while we sleep. I may never open my eyes to meet a new day. And especially right now, I am going through the pains of the internal organs that seem to be worsened the following day; I am grateful for finding myself greeting a new morning.
2. Living with Mom, however difficult it is: Although I sometimes want to live alone with my cats in a small but nice apartment, I cannot imagine not having anyone to talk to all day long and for the rest of my life—at least for now. I am just not prepared to live without Mom.
3. Eating – it is proof that my body is still operational despite the problems inside of my body. I am scared to death for a diagnosis that I will get after the physical scheduled for next Friday. Still, I can eat now.
I now know why some people want to trade their souls with vampires to gain external youth – the prime of health and beauty. So, I am considering accepting the law of nature, as Cicero said, because if we reject it, we ask for trouble. That said, appreciating simple, small things that I used to overlook while retaining graceful poise and becoming where I am now is probably the best and wisest thing to do. Or so I should think.
The doors of time closing
The candlelight flickering
In the wind of the hour
Entering the chamber
The dying candle shows
The last slipstream of times
Wistful images of memories
Even those I want to forget
Yet I don’t want to forsake.
Flame, Glass and Ink are Poems, essays, and reading notes by Stefania Joori Suh 
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