In the Wild, Mothers Get Lost Too
By Naana Hutchful
When I was twelve, my mother went away without a word. She came back after six months, also without a word. She looked like herself at first, only her eyes were a little darker. The hair she used to take compulsive care of was now matted in chunky twists, dry and brittle like twigs resting on her shoulders, weighing down her neck. For six months, my hair nested in cornrows, overgrown and frizzy, a humid, mossy forest floor. She looked at me, then through me, then fixated somewhere beyond me, somewhere I couldn’t reach. I lied. Her eyes were a lot darker. She was a shell of her former self. I mean, literally a shell, a fleshy husk. I ran to her. I needed to hold her. I had come face to face with loss in the dense woodlands, and I had curled up in a ball like a pangolin. Her body was as hollow and clanky as a drum. Her rigid, tree bark arms scraped my arms raw. Mother, mother, I said over and over, my tears slipping down her impliable body but she did not respond. She pulled back, violent and urgent like a wolf baring its fangs. Where she had gone, there was no coming back.
THE END
Author Bio: Naana Eyikuma Hutchful is a Ghanaian writer with work appearing in Pithead Chapel, Bending Genres, Gone Lawn, Maudlin House and forthcoming elsewhere. They like sunrises, yearning, and Wong Kar Wai films.