Cornflower Blind

By Sam Smith

Orphaned, I am in your garden
as he busies in your no-more home
adding up your no-more life.

They’re blue Mum,
a vibrant yet subtle shimmering mob
crowding the brick circle your indecision left barren.

Densely sapphire with a hint of lilac
in this desert-feeling unlikely heat
they lollop thirstily, happily.

More me than you, deliberately,
a flouncy girl still trying
to capture your heart.

The man doesn’t see them.
Dictating dimensions, charting chattels,
he is cornflower blind too.

Being a therapist did not prepare me for the trauma of both my parents dying  as a result of Covid19. 

I wrote ‘Cornflower blind’ sitting in the garden of their house where I had been trying to nurse them, and where my Dad died seven weeks after my Mum. A valuer was inside adding up the spoils of their lives, as I contemplated the flowers that I had planted for my Mum’s return.