Antiphrasis

opposites
 

Daughter forgets to take love or time from mother, and stays at home. Makes one or two enemies, by calmly dying. Soon all of her slowly-increasing poverty is overflowing.

Economic boom creeps across the village, and the daughter gives up her job abandoning lambs. She bought a piece of arable land, and grew crops such as salad leaves and soft fruit. She wondered sometimes to herself what the meat-based plant food tasted like… She grew distracted and vague, and wandered accidentally away from her mother’s home. 

When she is safely by the fireside, slippers on and with hot drinking chocolate in hand, her mother crawls slowly on all fours to shoo her away.

‘Mum,’ she said ‘I had a good time and I want you to understand what I have made of myself, I’m really quite a success, you know.’ 

‘You are last person I was hoping to see,’ Mother said angrily. She steals from the daughter three bangles, some underwear and a hat, and keeps her mouth at a distance. Parties are banned; the cows grow thin, but live to a grand old age.

‘Your daughter was found, and is lost; she was alive but to me she is dead.’