Agnieszka Wodzińska
Before I could speak, I found language in your soft face, mimicked it, and tomorrow, I will see you one last time. If I seem afraid, forgive me, but you know I’ve never done this before.
When I heard the news, I dreamt that you opened your eyes and so I told them you were fine, but they dragged me away and piled on the dirt. I woke up afraid, yet I was never scared of you, so why start now? There’s no use.
Tomorrow, I will be brave and say goodbye. If it sounds like a greeting, please let it, let it be the start of letting you go. I will stroke your hair and stay calm and won’t think of dirt unless it’s your garden, where the magnolia blooms early still, puckering, pink.
The garden, where you made friends with spiders and moths, scooped them up into your capable hands, staved off wasps daring to hurt your baby’s baby napping in the shade. Plucking chives for dinner. Humming to your favourite rose. Gloved fingers in the soil, the soil, fizzing with life, you’d say, cracking eggshells, raking, singing in the mid-day sun.
Tonight, I weigh each memory of you in my hand like I am handling rare seeds. Then, loose on my feet, I come close to the veil, where you sit in your favourite chair, smiling a conspirator’s smile. You lean in and gently push me back into the fold of life.
Agnieszka Wodzińska is a writer and art historian based in Scotland. Agnieszka’s prose tackles memory, obsession, and the making and breaking of rituals. Her short story “Commune” was included in April Showers Publishing’s Winter 2025 Zine.
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