'In the old days at home the Neverland had always begun to look a little dark and threatening by bedtime. Then unexplored patches arose in it and spread, black shadows moved about in them, the roar of the beasts of prey was quite different now, and...
i will drag my body up to higher ground, take it from the sea, away from that wreckage and give it to you, if only i could, a new chest where tumours don't bloom in silence like those lilies at night;
their funeral petals are damp in a dream of a world where the blades did not cut you free of that mass,
and somewhere: like mother, like daughter, i might see you in the mirror and my breasts will follow in betrayal of their body;
it was like mother like daughter when those weeds took root in her brain (and i can't imagine her screams)
and the morphine, the clinical white and all those who are dying in chairs in this room beside us: we try not to hear their coughs or see their faces slack with pain --
we squeeze each other's hands (like mother like daughter) and i think of nanny's screaming, the wire of my bra, oestrogen and your bare scalp, the machine that beeps heavily beside you
-- i swallow a sob for that day when --
i'd give it to you, if only i could, a new chest where tumours don't bloom in the dark of your organs and tissues i wish it were enough, i would -- i would --
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