August
by Seraphina Dawn
I was nine when the Princess of Wales died, sitting with my mother on the couch. My mother mourned death in her bathroom, not in front of us kids. My sisters and I had sat outside the door, our hands pressed to the wood, listening to her grief. I imagined her long blond bangs like Lady Di’s shielding her face as she wept.
Birth, weddings, and funerals are different threads in the same cloth. Pull one, and you’ll see how they’re intertwined.
If I could wind back the clock, I would take my small hand and brush my mother’s bangs back from her face. I’d be with her tears. I’d walk with her down the gravel path to where her father was buried. I’d plant a rose bush in our backyard. I’d use my hands to create life instead of praying over the dead.
Seraphina Dawn has a BA in Literature from Simone Fraser University and participated in the Creative Writing Program at UC Berkeley. Seraphina is a Kundalini teacher, writer, and poet. She admires Clarice Lispector’s prose, Octavia Butler’s fiction, and the philosophy of Simone Weil. Seraphina currently lives in Istanbul.