Below the Surface
after The Babadook (2014)
I
The mother paces the stormy steps.
Weeps and thinks of her husband, dead years.
Looks at her child with his eyes all clouded.
All tremor and sweat.
On the wall the shadow moves too slowly to follow.
She thinks it wears a hat.
II
My mother crushes little pills made sweat damp
in the palm of her shaking hands. She lies
on the floor in the shape of a V, arms pale
and pink and always freckled. She tells me
something is following her. She says she sees it
at the foot of the stairs.
III
The son draws pictures.
Black ink and bold, taped to the wall.
He watches the sun go silent behind heavy clouds.
Everything looks muted until it does not.
Everything is just a book held open.
IV
In childhood she made our front room
her library, painted the walls a sweet
forest green, filled the space with broken spines,
dog-eared pages, the smell of books worn
in smooth hands. Home from school we’d find
her there, hands wrapped around soft
covers, legs crossed at the knee. Sometimes she’d
tell us to stay and we’d watch her read,
the small of her mouth shaping words we didn’t yet
know. Sometimes she’d put the book face down
on the table.
V
The mother cuts her teeth with silver.
Grins at the melting front door, the son’s bloodied hand.
Crawling on all fours, she arrives at the foot of the stairs.
She is holding the end of a rope.
She is foaming at the mouth, her lips gone sour.
She wears a mask in the shape of her face.
VI
At the edge of my vision she scurries along
the baseboards, elbows pointed skyward,
pressing fingers to the lingering dust settled home.
I can’t help but want her different –
my sisters and I children, small copies of one
another, our mother standing with her back
to the sun, raised hand casting a shadow
on her dancing face, the whole field feeling
like a balanced pin rushing up and towards us.
How she unfolded full armed and grinning.
How her shadow
pressed its body against our own.
VII
The mother sees her husband’s face in the walls.
Sometimes, he’s grinning.
Other times bloodied and toothless and lying still.
More often he’s doing nothing at all.
VIII
Some nights I wake to dreams of my mother
sitting at the foot of my bed. She’s not really
doing anything, just sitting with her hands
kneading circles endlessly, round and round
on the bed, her arm, her face. Her mouth
is a hole. When she opens it I see her insides
squirming as if they’re trying to come up,
as if they want to lay here
between us.
IX
She thinks it wears a hat.
When it shrieks, it just says its name.
X
When she says it’s following me I wonder
what she sees. If it’s just her own face
staring back from the ground, eyes wide.
If it’s child me, arms outstretched and
begging, fingers winding in the air
between her and whatever she keeps trying
to turn away from.
XI
The son holds his small hands to the mother’s face.
He is a child.
This is his moment of great roundness.
The black goo she expels coats the room.
Her eyes are a cloudless film.
Looking endlessly at the boy looking back.
Body sagging against the wall, shoulders hunched.
She thinks of the creature still lurking below.
The creature living in her basement.
The creature that won’t let her alone.
When the son says you can’t get rid of it,
she thinks she realizes
what he means.