Mother of Fiction

Freeing breath,

I bring her to light,

lifting to surfaces,

translucent-clear. 

She gasps,

suckling new life

like billowing sails on ships,

her papery lungs dilate. 

She’s crawled from dark corners

(left to smudgy ruin)

whilst others strutted past,

peacock-proud, 

but she cowered,

shuddered for warmth,

fumbling with half-written pages,

forgotten, pseudonymous,

a plastic fledgling

bearing stony wings. 

But, her time has come

to strike for literary gold

as others before;

a new, stylised calligraphy rebirths,

scribes her eyes wide open 

to newly published worlds. 

Her lines form,

turning formed pages,

gliding, where once,

she froze, petrified of being,

static like historical statues

bearing dusty, misremembered names. 

Now, energised winds 

uplift each chapter,

no longer burrowed deep

in cloistered, deadened soil,

a womb-like nunnery. 

She is a newborn,

a rising Persephone, 

reaching for the sun;

toddling to fruition,

I grip her chubby hands

when she totters,

building confidence 

like towering building blocks. 

My child. 

My creation. 

Her mother of fiction.