Read the Second Prize Winner 2025 - A List of Some of the Times I Cried On My Mother's Shoulder by Jay McKenzie

 A List of Some of the Times I Cried On My Mother's Shoulder 
by 
Jay McKenzie

1. That time when she was me and I was her and we were one and the same except we weren’t because she was Mother and she held me to her shoulder and let my soft tears soak into her pyjama top, her shirt, her skin, and I cried to her because I was cold, I was hungry, I was confused and because that was my language and she the only other speaker. 
2. That time when I slipped, not from my bike like the other kids, but from my brother’s scooter because he was big and I was small and I wanted to be him and so I tried but nobody told me that balance is a learned thing, and I was still trying to stand up straight as a tree, and the skin peeled from my leg like bark leaving pitted cherry juice all over my knee, and sand and snot mingled on the light windbreaker she used to wear in spring. 
3. That time when she said not to climb the fence outside Presto and I tore my dungarees from ankle to bum, and she was mad as hell and red and stern and shaking, and when she held my hand in the Accident and Emergency that hand was sweaty and her hair was all tufted like a nest and her eyes wide and wild, when I opened my mouth but before I even had the chance to say sorry Mum, my chin was resting in the collarbone dip of her denim jacket and her hand was sweeping my back in long breathless strokes. 
4. That time when she looked at me with helpless longing and I yelled that no, she did not understand, could never understand, what it is to be the outsider, the loveless, the pariah, to be shunned and excoriated by friends who wore lipstick and sneers and smirks and side eyes under their Rimmel, that she was old, didn’t know what it was to be a teenage girl, and how she didn’t laugh or roll her eyes at my dramatics, but instead said, let’s watch The Princess Bride, have pizza, and she got us a Hawaiian and I sniffed and let my kohl eyeliner trace a ribbon onto her t-shirt. 
5. That time when she handed me the flowering cactus she’d brought on the drop off trip to brighten up my room in the halls of residence and the crippling awareness that I wasn’t going to see her everyday, and I ripped, letting the soft inside parts of me flutter to the carpet in the sparsely furnished room, and how I said don’t leave me Mum, and she shh shh shushed me, soothing as the lemon myrtle essential oil she was dabbing behind her ears those days and my hot tears fell onto her heartachingly smart jacket. 
6. That time when a man, no a boy, yes always a boy sometimes sheathed in manskin, stamped on my sloppy pink interior, ripped out my ventricles and handed them back on a plate with dripping entrails, and his it’s not you it’s me ringing, stinging, loud as a bell and sharper than a scream, once, twice, three times and she was there in paisley, in tartan, in floral, her shoulder sank to cushion the fall of crystalline heartbreak leaking from her daughter’s eyes. 
7. That time when she was at the train station for the arrival of the 13:59 from London and I got off with my sagging backpack full of dirty clothes and broken dreams and I failed Mum, and her saying no, you’re here and that’s succeeding, and bitter coffee from the station cafe because who needs good coffee when the perfect life you stitched out of magazines and borrowed clothes lies in tattered ribbons? and she pulled me in, hands cupped around my ears and said, don’t let anyone take your dreams from you, and I snivelled and there they were, tear-rivers wending into the forest of that itchy mohair jumper she insisted would carry her from spring to autumn. 
8. That time when we sipped champagne and wore our fine clothes and tried not to ruin our lipstick by taking tiny bites and yes, there I was in ivory and old lace, finger caught in a rose-gold loop and heart caught halfway between mama and man, to the bride and groom, spotted the welling under her half-moon eyeshadow, a trigger, starting gun for mine to race a trail down artfully-buffed pink cheeks, and then there, cupped and loved, dripping a hundred pounds worth of MAC cosmetics onto her primrose M&S dress. 
9. That time when it was her hand that I needed to squeeze, to crush, to get that child out of me, because she understood of course, what it is to push your heart out between your legs and let it loose in the big world, and how she whispered, you’ve got this baby, soft as butter into my ear and yes, I got this, and I did this and how I made this thing, this tiny red girl, how this child existed inside my mother back when I was being formed, how her future great-grandchildren wait unformed in this child, the midwife said three generations, so special, and tool a photo of us nuzzled together, holy trinity, and then I cried, face pressed into the crumpled pinstripe she sweated in because she’d been called away from work to be with her baby and her baby. 
10. That time when the officer confirmed that yes indeed it was Neil that was pulled from the river that morning, when I ripped like a split carcass from toe to tip and screamed so loud that nothing came out, resonating through air and ocean but too raw and hollow for soundwaves, and how me breaking made her break and broke me more and the thought, the thought of my little girl growing up without her father and no, it was too much and there, in the folds of the jumper I loaned her while we waited for my husband to come home even though we already knew he was never coming but hope was all we had, a dam-wall cracked and I flooded her shoulder with the surety that Pandora’s box was actually empty. 
11. That time when we dropped my daughter at the airport, because gap year they call it and everyone’s doing it, and who am I to cut off the corners of this world for her? and my own mother smiled and said I know, sweetie, I know, and we nibbled curling cheese sandwiches in the car and she caught my every sigh with a grin, the corners of her mouth pulled up like curtains framing a proscenium, and she said she’s the only one who knows what your heart sounds like from the inside, and I blinked a bit and they started flowing then, and she pulled me across the car, the gearstick digging in my leg and she offered me her cardigan to soak up my ache and there was a faintly sweet scent of decay caught like a moth in the fibres. 
12. That time when they let me sit long after the other visitors had gone and her head was hanging forward like a wilting dandelion, I remember you, she said, and the gowns always smelled the same, clean but anxious, the material stiff from overwashing, and she let me pull her in, raise the sagging bulb framed by delicately crisping petals, and she said oh, is Daddy here? and I wondered if they have spare gowns because this creased blue thing was drenched. 
13. That time when they let me choose how to dress her and I gave them my favourite jumper because now it’s my turn, and I need to send some of me with her, for comfort, for joy, and I lean over her and let them come, like she always encouraged and the smell is both of us and I just don’t want to stop because I know this is the last time, but my daughter says, let her go, Mum, let her go, and I know there’s nothing there anymore and my daughter and I cry rivers into one another’s pressed blacks and who is supporting who we don’t know anymore, but this is mothers and daughters and we let the salt and wet and thoughts of a time when and a time when flow into shoulders.