Vain, of course, but I have an email folder where I
hoard people’s praise. Every nice comment, every bit
of positive feedback, gets shoved into the folder.
For me to look at when I feel down. And the higher
the status of the ones who bestow it, the more
their words shine and make me glow. I glut myself
on exaltation like a fat kid at a buffet. I roll around in it
like a hippo in slush. Yet my own mother’s words
give me reason to pause. She writes on Facebook:
“I absolutely love this poem”. What to do? Do I
take a screenshot and save it to the file? My mum
didn’t go to uni, left school at sixteen. What the hell
could she possibly know about the words she sees?
And she’s my own mother anyway – I may as well
have displayed a two-year-old’s finger painting
on the fridge door, for all her praise even means…
I save her words. Print them off, put them in a drawer.
My own mother – what could possibly mean more?
And what is art for if not to say “Look at me, mum.
Here I am. Look at me. Can’t you see what I’ve done?”
Joshua Seigal