Inherited Friend Poem by fiona sinclair

Inherited friend

News of mother's death reached her friend
like the last sensation of a local Marilyn.
Slipping into the back pew on the final bars
of ‘The Lord is my shepherd',
she left as the curtains touched.
Then I receive her letter's extended hand.
So on chintz sofa holding china cups,
I listen to her daughter's dazzling Dallas lives,
she skim reads my news like a local paper,
then riffs about the past
until suddenly the electric shock
of her casual your mother…

Thirty years before,
when my uncle unilaterally decided
he'd married the wrong sister,
civil war in my family; grandmother and aunt
bombarding this woman with telephone salvos
until her I don't want to be involved anymore,
despite mother's boozy begging calls.

So I am on a bed of nails
as she fondly recounts how mother would nurse
their Chihuahua on her lap all afternoon,
and when she departed,
the little dog smelt foppishly of Chanel no 5.