Annie Blake is an Australian writer who started school without knowing any English. She has been published in Verity La, Vine Leaves Literary Journal, About Place, Australian Poetry Journal and Cordite Poetry Review, forthcoming in Southerly and GFT Press. Her poem ‘These Grey Streets’ has been nominated for the 2017 Pushcart Prize. She is excited about the process of individuation, research in psychoanalysis, philosophy and cosmology. She is a former teacher who lives in Melbourne with her family. She blogs at annieblakethegatherer.blogspot.com
 
 
 
 
 
The Sun Was As Yellow As Her Wash Soap

Sometimes I feel glad no one
knows me. I can sit on the floor in front of the glass doors
and stare into my yard to watch the white
linen flap on the line. I think of my Borderline
mother and how I used to pass over the clothes and pegs — I was young
enough to think that all mothers knew how to love. This was our bonding
time — the time to tell me secrets even adults could not
be trusted with. I look at the sun now and I pick up the scent of her washing soap
and I see her hands which were always older
than her face. She used to leave the soap harden until it formed shards
on the wash house sill. The sun was as yellow as that soap. An impenetrable hard
yellow that would not dare dissolve through the first layer.
I remember our small weatherboard house and how my dad painted it green so we could save money. After lunch, the dog barking would mean the mail
had come. A letter from a relative’s slow writing and maybe even a photo.
It is good when no one is home to watch how you remember
things. They were the days I thought my mum was God
and I smile when I think of how I used to jump up for the line and spin around so I could fly.