Medicine Bears
Simone Mansell Broome
simone@simonemb.com
Six weeks, two full teaspoons
of syrupy pinkness, morning, noon, night,
and my mother would dry
her hands on her skirt, perch,
silent, just till she hoped
she'd seen me swallow, then go.
And in between, there was
sleeping and waking and making
wallpaper shapes turn into bears,
hoping they'd be the gentle,
honey-bearing sort.
And every evening, Dad would come
and sit next to me, and we'd watch
old gangster films, Noggin the Nog, the Dickens
serial. More, Daddy, more.
And he'd teach me stuff like -
twende baharini - which means, perhaps,
let's go to the sea, in Swahili.
When you're better, he'd say. When
you've had all that medicine,
and you're better.
Then he'd be quiet again, and stay
till the bears went home.
©2007 Simone Mansell Broome
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