Rosie Penny

A List of Holds

1. Three girls hold Bibles. The smallest holds her finger to her mouth.
2. Two girls hold hands. The butterfly evades the grasp of the girl in blue, a hand that could crush it, should she try to caress it.
3. The child is held within the lap of the adult. Engulfed, encompassed, at its mercy.
4. Paintings like this fail to hold my attention. The girl holds out her dress and I wonder if she has ever felt cloth that is rough, with stains cemented in it or holes eaten out of it. 
5. An apron holds the bellows of the dress in, fluting out over the hips. Like the people in uniform, the oil painting is a commodity to be displayed.
6. The young ones hold each other's gaze, hands held in their laps in a foetal scrunch. The dragon looks ahead with one red eye. Paint holds onto the cardboard puckered with dimples. To bond is not to smooth things over but to strengthen a connection with the uneven. 
7. Someone holds a camera, points it at the mirror getting a clear shot of Uncle on the arm chair. Uncle props himself up with an elbow to bash out a tune on the small plastic keyboard. He grips the counter and leans towards the microwave like a cat outstretched waiting to be fed.
8. Pockets hold his hands flush against his pelvis. The belt holds his jeans up and his shirt in. The text holds the image accountable for the heartbreak encountered. The pretence of family keeps me from something I am yet to find, an experience of relationships free from obligation.
9. A hand wraps around the child’s shoulder. The hand attempts what the sofa does without question. The sofa holds, the cat, the family, them together, the fabric of day to day life.
10. One girl holds a jug, the boy a knife against the bread. I behold another girl in the background. Pushed into the dark yet still relevant enough to paint. To be seen but not heard, that’s what they used to say.
11. The paint holds secrets, blurred facial features, the anonymity of those beloved. Hands grace the face of the table. The table holds them there - something to gather around, sit under and talk over. 
12. The woman holds my eye contact, she looks like an alien. Rounded and smoothed over in all the right places, which makes them look like the wrong places. The hair holds tight curls, glued to the scalp in precision, precise like the dagger collar which has been ironed to prudish formality.
13. The mother holds her baby, the son is slumped against her. The daughter stands alone, supported only by the pavement. Flowers jut out of their fists.
14. I can’t imagine looking at a baby, knowing it was inside of me, and is now outside of me, living off of me. Filling my chest with milk to spill over into an open mouth. Holding all that responsibility and storing it up like a cabinet. Would I be mahogany or oak or something less sturdy, an Ikea flat pack? Something rigid and unyielding, a not good enough mother. 
15. My genes are held in the double helix of my DNA. Twisted into shape, wringing out my traits forcing them to dribble down the generations. I have my grandmother's depression, my mother’s and brother's too. I have been spared from the wires, the loud buzz and the zap of my humanity being taken. But not perhaps from the chokehold of generational trauma; the throat left bruised and aching even when the hands are prised off.
16. The title holds me captive as I grapple with the idea of an absent presence. If the present is here, and I am here, how can it be gone, lost or forgotten. I am absent, and the presence of I contradicts my being. It only pains me to hold onto something that is not there.