Mama is waiting for me perched on her cliff

with her black, bat-winged parasol opened

scrutinising the sky with owl spectacles,

there might be sun that sears our backs,

there could be rain dropping pellets,

she has thoughtfully dressed

in a light fabric, hewn from the temerity

of leaves from all seasons,

the young green cleave to the bodice,

weaved in with the creases and crinkles

of fallen and rested,

needled into the flow of the skirt and sleeves.
These days she is so easy to carry,

her 75 years of story and lamentation

fold into the contours of my back

becoming my carapace as I stretch my neck

towards the horizon of densely designed

scaffolds and cranes holding the steel

and concrete blocks,

we scale as one species.
It is only when we reach the turret

of “Yiatrina”                                                            Γιατρίνα: informal speech for female doctor 

she disembarks to unveil

her ruptured, heroic body

awakened from death

by telescopic insistence,

Mama looks to me to voice her gratitude

and acceptance, as I become the myth

of the humble whisperer

‘upon settlement in strange land’.
After the tick of health,

Mama would rather I climb her back

but her carapace shrunk into her spine

when she turned 51,

and we both know that my heart

was birthed for two souls. 
Through pathways spilling cables like entrails,

she screams in fear of our fall

until we reach the turbulent weeds near home,

where she dares her body to escape my back

and trudges the climb with nose to the ground,

as if a mushroom would sprout with a sniff,

her memory creeps and entangles

my feet to her door,

she implores me to enter

with a fig she snatched from a passing branch,

knowing I am now the eight-year-old

with the hunger for anything sweet.