It’s a cold, bleak day
which might explain why she says:
“This is my daughter Nuala,
who has come all the way from South Africa to visit me.”
“Though,” she adds, looking at the nurse,
“by the looks of you, you come from there too.”
Well satisfied with her own civility,
she whispers: “I was going to say:
This is my daughter Nuala—
she’s just a little bit odd.”
Finuala Dowling‘s poetry collections include I Flying, winner of the Ingrid Jonker Prize; Doo-Wop Girls of the Universe, joint winner of the Sanlam Prize and Notes from the Dementia Ward, winnter of the Olive Schreiner Prize.
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