Her crimson nails were blazing on the windowpane,
competing with the burning bushes down below.
The autumn wind was blowing children to their homes,
the afternoon already finished up again.
She put her duster down and watched them pass and play,
like dandelion puffs now drifting past her toes.
Their hair was jet against their shirts like granite crows,
their shirts now wrinkled like the leaves – some mother’s pain.
A horrid wistfulness welled up inside of her
as laughs rang through the window’s crack to pester her.
She closed the window, shutting out the bitter chill.
She has her money, home, a husband – all so nice –
but not a boy or girl. And then, before her eyes,
the school-kids passed beyond her placid windowsill.
I wrote four sonnets for my English novel study based on the fantastic novel Shizuko's Daughter by one of my favourite authors, Kyoko Mori. It tells of four women and their struggles in Japan. The protagonist Yuki deals with her mother's suicide; her mother Shizuko deals with her husband's affair; Hanae, Yuki's new stepmother deals with her bitter life; and Masa, Yuki's grandmother, must deal with the fact that her daughter took her own life.
ReplyDeleteThis sonnet was "Autumn", representing Hanae, a bitter, childless stepmother. It was the third in my sonnet cycle, Four Women, with each sonnet assigning a season to similar characters in Shizuko's Daughter.