Departures

A plane ploughs through the clouds as she scrubs and cleans the plugholes in the washbasins and the kitchen sink and the laundry and another plane ploughs when she mops the floors and washes the benches and polishes the windows and another plane ploughs when she reorders all the cupboards and drawers until finally everything is done and she can go into her garden where the only sounds she hears are birds singing in the trees that her daughter used to climb and she cuts camelias from the bush her daughter used to love because the blooms were pink and then she goes back into the house to sit in the glint and the gleam and breathe in the scent of flowers as she recalls her father’s fury in the days before Facebook and Zoom and email when she told him she was leaving for the other side of the world and he roared that her mother had never stopped crying since and insisted she wait until they were dead before she left but she didn’t wait and she said it was her right to choose her own life so this morning at the airport before her daughter departed she told her to be happy and they both knew there was Facebook and Zoom and email and after she waved goodbye she headed home and scrubbed and cleaned and polished for the rest of the day with the roar of planes inside her head and now the sun sinks and the sky glows pink and she drops into a chair in the pink-tinged dusk with her eyes closed and a pink camelia held to her cheek.