Marka Rifat

Cradle

I should not be saying goodbye, in this bright, hushed white,
cradling the tender flesh of your hand,
catheter-tethered.

When you were all soft and squirming flesh, I held that hand
to wave goodbye and you laughed at this strange flapping,
another great amusement, among so many.
You came to love this gesture, adding jumping and shouting
to the ritual. 

At the school gates, a wild two-armed swoop
marked your eager departure, primed for adventure,
blind to my brimming eyes.
I learned to hide my fears behind proud smiles
each time you raced away, towards, always towards.

In the embrace of tubes, the sigh and click of machinery,
no towards is left. 
Goodbye will not wait. 

Marka Rifat’s last post was as an information officer for the National Health Service and this overlapped with her first steps into creative writing. She writes in a variety of genres and formats, including short stories, plays and articles. She is also an illustrator and photographer. Marka’s written and visual work appears in more than fifty North American, UK, Australian, and Indian anthologies, websites, and journals.  She is the Dover Smart Jubilee winner and has been commended by the Federation of Writers (Scotland) and in the Saki, Toulmin and Janet Coats prizes. She has been selected twice in the John Byrne Award. This autumn, The French Literary Review published one of her poems and photographs, she will have three poems in Dreich magazine this year.  She lives in north-east Scotland.