There is a quiet to this room right now.. the fan is on, but the air is not really moving.. the crickets outside the open window drown all sound. She is around.
Nights like this, out on the swing, under the night blooming jasmine covered wooden pergola.. Sitting next to my mother. A breeze would softly blow and the owls would begin to hoot.. low and spooky rising high into the night.. cackling like witches away on their brooms..
My mother would call in her cats.. one by one, the three cats would make their way lazily into the house.. they did not worry about the owl like my mother did.
We would resume our conversations… this and that, “mom please read my hand”… She would take up my hand. I loved sitting next to my mother while her perfume softly filled my nose, her eyes closed and she would take a deep breath.
Her hand was always soft and warm in mine.. tiny and strong. She would squeeze then let go.. finally she would breathe in deeply, pat the back of my hand and then ask me what I wanted to know… One by one she would answer my questions, telling me what would happen in the next week or two.. she was rarely wrong.
There was magick in my mother. True magick, the kind with the “k”. I feel her around tonight, checking in.. the lights are a little dimmer, the shadows a little longer.. The room slowly seems like a facsimile of itself, hollow but warm and sepia tinted… deep quiet stillness… slowly breathing, staring off into the darkness…