Stanza 1: we first met
Unusual situation:
meeting as adults
Stanza 1: still alive,
Almost sounds
surprised; relationship
still in existence but not
flourishing
Stanza 2: remain closed as secrets.
Mother hasn’t given
Kay all the answers
Kay needs, potentially
thwarted
Stanza 2: Twice since I
Possessiveness over
number/keeping count
suggests importance
Stanza 2: like a baby in a shawl,
Simile: Kay
protecting orchids -
fragile, like the baby
she was when adopted
Stanza 4: unprovoked,
Kay doesn’t
understand why she
was given up
Stanza 4: rearranged
Kay attempting to salvage
orchids and relationship
with Mother
Stanza 5: upset orchids
Pathetic fallacy -
things turned upside
down/ conveys Kay’s
emotions
Stanza 5: troubled hands.
Kay not understanding,
unsure of feelings towards
Mother
Stanza 6: The skin
shut like an eye in the dark;
Personification/simile:;
Mother is secretive, Kay in
the dark
Stanza 6: my mother’s hands are all I have.
Only thing that Kay feels
she has inherited from her
birth mother
Stanza 7: through a tunnel the other way
Links back to train stations -
emphasis distance and sound
diminishing
Stanza 8: A digital watch her daughter was wearing when she died.
Kay had a sister who
died, meant something
to her Mother, unlike
Kay
Stanza 9: and suddenly grow old – the proof of meeting.
Meeting has spoiled Kay’s
illusions of her Mother
Stanza 9: awkward and hard to hold
Conveys Mother’s
discomfort, doesn’t want to
touch Kay? No connection
between them.
Stanza 10: Compressed. Airtight.
suggests entire story
hasn’t been told and that
Moher has perhaps taken
no risks with what she has
divulged
Stanza 11: bag of tricks.
Mother’s story isn’t
honest or Kay is not
being told the full
story
Stanza 12: A door opens and closes.
Kay leaving meeting place,
Door to the past, Door ‘opening’ shows promise of a relationship but it ends on ‘closed’ so there is no hope of a relationship Suggests there is no going
back for them both
Stanza 12: Time is outside waiting.
Personification: Kay has taken a trip to the past and now must return to the present.
Stanza 12: draught in my winter room.
Metaphor for cold
relationships, also
Orchids are affected by
cold weather
Stanza 13: Boiling water
Thinking about ways to keep the orchids alive,
extreme methods suggests the relationship is uneasy
Stanza 14: sharp knife.
Separation of Kay from
Mother via umbilical
cord
Trying to keep flowers
(& relationship) alive
Giving up, completely
severing ties
