Roan without a W, I’m sorry. By Syreeta Muir

Sigfrid Lundberg CC




Roan without a W, I’m sorry.


I hold your body for a long time before they put it in the casket. The funeral parlour people told me to take my time, but their patience has an intense quality. So, eventually I lay you back on your blanket and move to the side. It takes all my strength. As they lift and lower you into the box, it seems odd to me that you look light as a feather.
I fall asleep for a while and dream about a room filled with wooden aeroplanes, atlases, and miniature railways.
In the morning we queue up at the office and register a death.

There was a man called John on the children’s cancer ward who had a tiny train in his watch. It’s from Canada, he tells you, taking it off so you can look at it properly. The train is called The Rocky Mountaineer. You are enchanted and I can tell how much you liked him by the way you‘re peering intently at the workings, turning it sideways, and chatting away like he isn’t a complete stranger.
 
At the funeral I thank people who are saying things like: “If you need anything...”  and, “he’s out of pain now” and talking about “ a better place,” while touching me on the arm and edging away. When one of them asks: “Are you going to be ok?” I don’t say, “No…
No, I don’t think that I will ever be ok again.”
For the next few weeks I have a feeling of constant worry, like maybe I’ve left something dangerous switched on. I dream about doctors doing everything they can, only they’re doing it all wrong.

Then we’re getting ready to leave for Canada. I want to take you with us. I am told this makes no sense. You’re not really in the little, white box. But it makes more sense to me than leaving you stuck in one place, down in a hole in the ground. In the end the matter is dropped and I carry your ashes in my bag to the airport feeling something like relief.
While we’re there I dream of you holding out your arms to me.

The week you were diagnosed terminal I wrote to Make a Wish for that trip to Disneyland Paris you were always saving up for. It was a long-shot, I knew, but it was the only thing that you’d still shown any enthusiasm for since the world began to end. That, and the red and gold clutch bag you had your eye on at the charity shop. Your interests were  particular and you pursued them ruthlessly.
The first story you ever wrote when you were four years old, was called: “Manclover and the Wig.”  I remember thinking, “My child is a genius!” as you stuck the pages together with Sellotape, refusing my help. Once finished you sat on your bed, crossed your legs in that way you used to, like you should be wearing a smoking jacket and cravat. I sat on the floor and listened while you read it to me.
Two years and a brain tumour later you were much less idiosyncratic, much less articulate. There was, on all counts, ever so much less of you.
We had a lot of meetings with the  doctors about whether you were going to make the trip to Paris. The logistics and management of it all. A lot of, “ if”  and could you…? and “is it…?” …just too…much.  Did I agonise too long writing that email? Whole days. There’s still a cold rush of guilt whenever I wonder.

Make a Wish wrote back to say they were so very sorry, but not this time, perhaps you’d like something else? Exhaustion told me it was for the best. We took you to the Museum of Science and Industry, instead, clutching your  crimson-red purse. Let you buy the dolphin ring, and the crystals, and the graphene sheets you coveted at the gift shop.

When we return from Canada I look for “signs”, we buy saplings and plant them in all your places. I write tiny poems:

I know it’s late,
but remember
the day of helicopter seeds?

       

The cutter keeps,
and the cutter keeps
coppicing.

        

There’re so many acorns 
I’ll never see.
It’s unbearable.

​        

I know it’s really all just me trying to tell you how fucking sorry I am. For all the times I was impatient, or fantasised about a different life, or roared like a monster because we were late and you refused to put your coat on. For every time I carried you kicking and screaming through a hospital corridor to be pinned to a table, all alone.

When you were born, I thought “Roan and Willow are good names for you both,” because they are strong and hardy. Also, I like the idea that they have protective symbolism. Yours is Quickbeam, the Traveller’s Tree, pinnate leaves like eagle feathers.

I think about John from the Children’s Ward, every now and then. I wonder if he ever thinks about you and whether you made it. Perhaps, like me, he has looped you heroic in time, perpetually, chugging through rough terrain, like the tiny, tireless train on his wrist.

​



Syreeta Muir (she/her) has writing in Sledgehammer Lit, A Thin Slice of Anxiety, The Daily Drunk Mag, Ligeia Magazine, The Blood Pudding, Roi Fainéant Press, Jake and others. Her art has been featured in Barren Magazine, Olney Magazine, The Viridian Door, Rejection Letters and Bullshit Lit. She received Pushcart and Best of the Net nominations for her work in The Disappointed Housewife and Versification. Tweets as @phantomsspleen. Instagrams as @hungryghostpoet. Bluesky’s as @phantomsspleen.bsky.social.
​