My mother is like water.

It is Fiction Friday time again and to a certain extent, today’s extract was inspired by my own mother to whom, if I had a little more time today, I would dedicate a post. But she deserves my full attention and I will write about her next week. In the meantime, I leave you with the voice of Angel, one of the characters of my novel. 

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For the first time at 7am on this bright Saturday morning, I discover my mother under a different light, a thin ribbon of smoke escaping from her mouth. She is leaning against the banister, drawing smoke into her lungs, hoping that nicotine would sustain her better than oxygen has done in the past few decades. I stand there until all that is left from her cigarette is a dirty yellow filter that she stubs out on the handrail with unusual hatred, as if she is crushing whatever it is that is making her so miserable into an insignificant, powerless piece of trash. When it all dissolves in her fingers, she lifts her eyes towards the passing train in the distance. I would give anything to be granted permission to crawl into her head and understand what is going on in the tangled corridors of her mind. But in the heavy silence reigning over the balcony, all I can hear is the rumbling of a freight train filled with phosphates coming from the south. Not a single thought of hers. Not even a whisper.My

My mother is like water. Always finding a way out, seeping through cracks in the wall, shaping harsh rocks into velvet. Like a metamorphosis. Water solidifies, liquefies, evaporates, flows seamlessly; glaciers into oceans, oceans into rivers, rivers into clouds, clouds into rain… My mother is like water, but it appears as though she has hit a dam. A tall, cold, raw concrete wall, an impermeable barrier holding her hostage. Trapped, unaware of the price she has to pay, the ransom that would set her free. And I. I am just a spectator watching her decay in stagnating water. Slowly, almost imperceptibly.

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