When the priest came knocking by Roshni Gallagher

for the third time we shut him out
and he stood for a moment clutching
his beads in the rectangular window
of the hospice door – the line between
comedy and grief really is that thin –
someone knew there wasn’t time
for another rosary because suddenly
we’re watching the life tip gently
out of her
                 like water from a cup
and we all lean inward as though
to catch some part of her leaving or
as though we’re pulled forward the equal
and opposite reaction to her slipping
away so when you cough and say now
then trying to shake off the feeling like
a dog shivering off water I’m glad,
for a moment, to be taken briskly outside
so that we might go to an art gallery
or a book shop or a café down by the river
somewhere with books and a fire
but I’m thinking what are we doing
your mum has just died. All this before
I learn what a wake is and before
I mumble my first hail mary’s and why
are there so many and before I’m the only
brown person at the funeral and you’re
smiling and trying to usher me through
the art gallery gates as though this were
an interruption in my yearly visit to Sligo
and now that the worst has happened
and the waiting is over with what’s left to do
but mother me.

………………..

Roshni is a poet based in Edinburgh. She is a Scottish Book Trust New Writer's Awardee 2022. Her work has appeared in Gutter, Best Scottish Poems 2020, Butcher's Dog, Middleground, The Scotsman newspaper, and is forthcoming in New Writing Scotland.

Twitter: @roshnigallagher