‘The Second Mother’

Eva J. Stuart’s work is rooted in abstract portraiture, drawing from the complexities of a religious upbringing and the quiet struggles of women in a world that refuses to see them.

The Second Mother

(After Genesis 4)

My son was Enoch.

My father, Adam.

My husband Cain. 

I am the second mother 

They gave me no name,

yet I bore many.

And I bore shame.

Two brothers loved me.

I loved them both,

like two halves of the same heart.

One stood in the light,

the other crawled in the dark.

I would not choose. I was free.

I was not my brother’s keeper,

but a choice was made for me.

It came to pass in the open field.

I was near enough to hear it,

when their words failed.

A crack, like stone on wet fruit,

bruised the silence.

For if nothing is forbidden,

then all is permitted.

And when we are forced to listen,

nothing can be omitted.

The memory of my bare feet

striking the parched earth,

as I stumbled over dead roots.

as I came upon them.

One half of my love was gone,

like mourning dressed as dawn.

And Abel lay twisted,

like a lamb broken in birth.

I crouched over his body. 

I did not stop weeping.

I only ran out of tears.

Eve lay down beside him,

his head crushed like a fig,

red upon the red stone.

Her eyes were wide with knowing,

yet full of disbelief.

She knelt, and kissed his forehead,

but his touch brought no relief.

She was the first mother,

so the first to give birth to grief.

She held her child in her hands,

one lost to God,

the other to man.

She could not understand.

Yet knew that it was so.

She gave a moan,

long and low,

a sound that hollowed the world.

It trembled like a chord

drawn from a broken instrument.

A lamentation, 

the first music.

Darkness on the face

Of the deep. 

Mother, I said,

do not grieve.

This world is empty,

but soon it will be filled 

with our dead.

We have left paradise.

Lay down your love,

it is what Father 

would have willed.

Without innocence,

all we can possess 

is understanding.

As our eyes were opened,

His were closed. 

Eve wept for seven days

and shrieked through seven nights,

a sound to torment the serpent

that slithered on its belly

through the shivering earth,

afraid of the sin it had summoned,

fearing that the sin 

might exceed even the devil.

My brother’s murderer.

My only lover.

My father’s son,

and child’s father.

Cain.

He came to me at dusk,

As it began to rain.

I could hear it in the trees.

Cutting the heat of day.

He had the red ink 

of heartbeats on his hands.

And named it blood.

"I gave it that name," he said.

"Not God,

Nor the serpent."

And he was as a creator.

The first blood the world had seen

fell like floodwater.

And the ground, as it drank raw,

grew thirstier still,

and cried out: More.

He hid his face at first,

then showed to me his mark.

He said that God had spoken to him,

just as he had to Adam.

When I reached for him,

glaciers met my fingertips.

The warmth we’d shared was gone.

He was a spent sun,

the silence between stars.

As if love had fled

her lover’s bed,

and only longing remained.

Not a colour, just a stain.

The blessing now a curse,

What remained even worse.

He kissed me,

permafrost on his lips,

Artic on my tongue.

He turned from the west and said:

"We must walk east.

We must walk east forever."

Our words were now

snowfall on tundra.

So we walked east,

where no one waited.

No angels with flaming swords,

no guard stood at Nod’s gates.

Only vengeance, sevenfold.

And revenge not taken.

Only wind.

Only the setting sun.

Only the memory

of what was done.

Then came Enoch.

He never knew the garden,

only the walking,

only the open.

He clutched at my breast

with small, famished hands,

only hungry to consume.

Beneath our feet, the ground

that would never bloom.

Cain named a city for him.

We covered the earth in stone

and drowned it in blood,

so that God might not hear it speak.

But he would hear,

and we were afraid.

We were children. 

From that city

came judges,

lamentations,

songs,

kings and proverbs.

Each story took us further 

from the garden

than the last.

But no name for me.

Only numbers.

And the names of sons,

a litany of inheritance,

a psalm of wrongs.

So when my last child

was grown from belly

to battlefield,

I left Enoch to wander.

Tired of the deeds of man,

the plans they unmake,

the promises they forsake.

I followed the sunset west

and met Lilith,

where shadows gathered.

She was naked and unafraid.

She did not turn from my gaze,

clothed only in her long silver hair,

which wound in the wind as she stood there,

and fell to her thighs with a sigh.

She said she would not be subdued,

not by weakness,

nor by man.

Adam and I were made equal,

as all that is born can be killed.

We were the wrath of God.

We would kneel to no master.

We would beautify shame.

So my name is Silence.

And hers is Flame.

James Goddard