Special Edition: Candice Louisa Daquin

Candice Louisa Daquin

Our mother is concerned

After Robert Maddox-Harle

You have stayed out late again, light in the streets

your only route home, they dim and sputter with a

ransacking irregularity, like a heart beating beneath

wood. You didn’t attend the funeral, there in the uncluttered

part of your soul —you remained behind as we

gathered all our black clothes and tutting at their

fading, ran for the car on thin heals. Rain blocked all sound

that day —the same day you turned from the window like

a flower angled out of light, dropping your folded arms

into space, into a room of your own, nobody could ever enter.

I sit by your bed, fidgeting with the loose hems of your blanket

familiar and all strange; your mouth is loose and silent, your

long pianist fingers rest atop the sheet, like gentle brail. I read

our favorite children’s books aloud —my voice cracking with disuse

and tears. There is a jar of old flowers, dried by the sun, that sit

in a simple poise on the window sill. I think if you could; you’d

ask me not to disturb them, even if our mother wants to

claim this space and clean it of its mote and its memories.

I will not let anyone in —this will be our time. perhaps in a month

or two, the clock will start ticking again —and you, tired of

death, will shrug it off and open the piano.

***

The faraway claimed world

Evaporate plays on the brown lines of your skin

where birds challenge balance and crowd budding trees

I think of you. The way you combed your hair erratically

leaving curls in every direction, how soft the tips of your

fingers, when I brought them to my mouth. There is a quietude

in loss —terrifying and opiate like. I have sat in the same position

for the whole day, unable to think of one thing to say. Your

shadow passes the dining room, crosses past the old mirror

in the landing and flickers with daylight up the stairs. I long

more than once —and less than twenty times, to follow you —

to discover you lying on our bed, smiling that secret smile you

know entranced me. The contrast of your skin against white sheets

your smell enveloping me. I want to turn around and not see

shadows from the corner of my eyes, but the wholeness of you

never broken —never lost, reclaiming your place. It is midday now

and the light has changed; casting latticed strips of blue and purple

on our walls. I say our, but they are only mine now. Your mother is

concerned —I don’t return her calls. The pen you used to write something

the last day of your life; sits atop a stack of letters, neither of us wrote.

I can taste ink in my mouth, the flowers keep being sent —

one day they will need burying too, along with my sense of

safety. A kingfisher swipes a small fish from the pond and

as it lifts out —wet and shining, the fish spasms in a last vain

attempt, to free itself.

***

The insidious mastery of grief

In the unfolding world of your mouth

Asian lilies bloom their heady perfume —rogue

with wild. It has been 1245 hours since you died

the sun stubbornly shone, despite you being put

in a box under earth. My hair is short now; entirely unlike

the me you knew. I have cast off the compunction to exist

beneath your gaze. It rains like a mirror into another universe

catapulting me back to afternoons I lay under you —listening

to the catch in your chest turn and wind. Our ghost steps

from an over-hot bath, her ebony skin releasing steam like a

hot-house plant. Even though I cannot see her face, I know she

is smiling in the luxuriate of solitude. Fast-forward and nobody

smiles at being alone. We gather balls of yarn and attach them

to people when they’re not looking. Kites as bright as your eyes

were once, fill skies with lament until unseasonable rain

pulls them downward, plummeting wet red birds to reaching

hands. You filled our walls with art —I removed all of it, save one

painting of you as a child. like a photograph, you are watching

something out of view, as if your life depended upon it. I see

the clutch of your little fist, how your thick hair fell over your

shoulders in much the same way. Micro-aggressions flicker

at the corner of your eyes and mine. I am older now

and years fall heavily with a patchouli sorrow, stirring through

the deep coffee mines of your pupils —trying to adjust to the dark.

 

Bio: Of Egyptian/French heritage, Candice Louisa Daquin is an immigrant working as a Psychotherapist in America. She is also Associate Editor for Raw Earth Ink and Queer Ink and Poetry Editor with Parcham Literary Magazine and Tint Journal. She co-edited the award-winning anthologies; The Kali Project and SMITTEN. Daquin’s last collection of poetry was Tainted by the Same Counterfeit. Her debut novel, The Cruelty, comes out fall, 2025, published by FlowerSong Press.

---

Setu, February 2025