I must be mother and child in your light.

Nearly a thousand years ago, one man painted the holy picture differently. He escaped the glass pieces and painted mother and child in one light. He painted them as they would look, just like you and me. It must take a certain amount of pain to seep back into the mould, I presume, just like it would take to break away. I wonder if he tossed and turned in his bed, wondering how he could have such impure thoughts of painting a normal picture of Virgin Mary and the Christ child.

I wonder if he stood in front of the canvas for days, staring at the white, wondering how best to pollute it. You asked me to let go the other day. I imagined a naked Giotto flinging his arms at his canvas, pure dyes shooting from his veins as he painted something from life after two hundred years. It hurts to let go. It must be just like childbirth. Union and severance together.

Of course I must let go. I am but the mother who understands that beyond being a family, everyone dear is but an individual. You wanted some space to breathe, still wet and warm from tearing away. So I gave you space. And somewhere inside that space, I became a hurting infant. My hands hurt from not talking to you, my ears rang of silence. I picked the phone and called you irrespective. I became an infant. And you kissed me into this world.

You make me mother and child in your light. Giotto’s pain of being normal lasted for several hundred years before they discovered geometry again. You must be him. You reformed me with the single stroke of a brush. And here I sit, perspiring the excess of you to keep you in.

Throw your colours onto me now, I long to be buried under your adolescence.