mother is old and gray.
or at least that is what she
tells me, the smile of a woman
who got through the first
half of her life through
popular fiction. the second half
through the misery of lying
in one's own funeral pyre.

except her husband lived.

mother is old and gray.
i used to think she was a fish. those
hot afternoons swimming in the dirty
pool in the backyard. we used to
listen to the portable radio, stories
of animals dead in cars and infants
suffocating from the heat. i used to think
that only if if i could catch her i could
keep her in my little plastic purse forever.

except my mother was allergic to plastic.

mother is old and gray.
during those years where common sense
slept and i beat at myself, almost as if were
a rug, to get the thoughts in my head gone
she was a fixture. she saw me stare vacantly,
my mind having fucked off to florida, when
i took exactly one hundred and fifty pills to silence
post-graduation promises.

except i never made her any promises.

mother is old and gray.
she asked after the boy in my life and her
smile was proud, as if she had brought him
into my life. she told me of the fear that
lay in her chest like a hot coal. the silence
was like water about to fall from
the rim of the faucet. i hurt and smarted
for her, like an open wound, her wound -
that she and my father had fashioned.

except my mother never asked for my tears.

my mother never asked anything of me at all.