Smile by Marie Isabel Matthews-Schlinzig

Smile

the seagulls on my child’s pink raincoat are wearing jumpers

yellow, green and blue

while on her psychedelic shoes

rainbows, suns and daisies dance merrily around the Earth

as if

right from the start

it was a small girl’s job to cheer up the whole world

‘will I get a smile?’ – ‘ah, there it is!’

we’re parked as usual in the buggy zone, and opposite a woman with grey curls tries to elicit joy from my somnolent toddler

like all her clothes and comfy shoes, the lady’s coat is plain and practical

her Zimmer-frame a harmless battering ram of metal, textile, plastic

this brief encounter takes me back to one spring morning

when we drove up into the Highlands, where

after one hundred and two years

my husband’s grandmother lay dying

in a nursing home

alone in a small room

clean and filled with light

thin all her life

now she was but skin stretched over bones

‘she sleeps a lot,’ they told us

and would we want a cup of tea

Death sat on a chair nearby

looking at baby photos we had sent

our voices, hushed

remembered, and caressed, but

only when we gently placed our newborn on her shoulder

there was a stirring in her body, maybe a sigh

we hoped to give her gladness, then

today I wonder whether she was so far gone

we should not have put love’s weight

in her path, once more

on our way out another white-haired resident spotted the child: ‘oh, what a cute wee boy,’ she said seeing the onesie striped in black and white, the London bus

‘it is a girl,’ a nurse corrected her, but she was undeterred: ‘oh, what a cute wee boy!’

and everybody

Death included

laughed

Marie Isabel Matthews-Schlinzig is a freelance translator, editor, and author. Her poetry publications include the pamphlet kinscapes and the anthology The Joy of Living which she edited to support The Maggie's Centres. Her work has been published by Dreich, Nine Pens, and Visual Verse, among others. She can be found on Bluesky (@whatisaletter.bsky.social) and Instagram (@schicketanz_books). MIMS lives in Dunfermline, Scotland, with her family.