Vivian
i paint on my features to cover up the the guilt of my baldness when it wasn’t an option for my mom to hide hers
a privileged sickness vs an inevitable disease
our last meal before her surgery was peach cobbler
which sucks because now we never have peach cobbler
and i love peach cobbler
don’t worry we continue to have many meals together to this day
it just took a lot of days
like the day i was angry at my mom for picking me up late from school
because it had happened
she finally lost herself clump by clump in a shower that slowly striped away her youth
that took what the cold caps had failed to salvage what she had so desperately tried to control but nothing was under her control that day
and you see i couldn’t help her
i didn’t know how
because i couldn’t find my magnifying glass to prove to her everything was going to be okay
I couldn’t find my microscope to prove to my mother that she was still a woman
even without her long beautiful hair
so i started to cry
I cried and told her i left the microscope in a nursing home in georgia and i was so sorry
i had to use it it to find her own mother’s shrunken body in that filthy mattress
but she still seemed so angry
even though i’m always misplacing my things
for me the word mother has always meant the same thing as beautiful
or at least, a version of it
for my mother the word beautiful meant “i shouldn’t eat this”
and the word mother meant foreclosure
and i wish there weren’t such strict definitions to these abstract conditions
because they are stealing our sight
and taking our ability to love and be loved shamelessly
like a thief who is never caught
because we never realized what was stolen from us
too caught up everything that doesn’t really exist
too caught up in searching for microscopic proof
wasting time better spent in acceptance of what you will never be able to see clearly
you see, i have learned to accept the smudged and foggy glass
the glass that is your heritage
no matter how much grime lay embedded in the foundation
let it never shatter
because you will spend the rest of your life picking up the pieces
you’ll waste all the time you have left, searching through a magnifying glass for any fragmented figments
to make sure no one is there but you to bleed on the unstable edges of your great grandmother’s story
a story painted to you only by your father and a eulogy speech
is it okay to call a eulogy the most beautiful thing you have ever heard aloud?
and your father will never know he is made of magical words
so do not let that glass of magical words shatter or you will spend the rest of your life in regret of the mangly mess you made
but sometimes i realize these things too late
because she told me to remember her in the cherry tree
and in the snowflakes
you were born in the spring
and I didn’t say anything
i just sulked in the back seat
and ignored her call for the second time that week
and all i could think when I saw her in that mattress was pathetic pathetic pathetic
not realizing i was the pathetic one
not realizing there was so much more to life than living
because life is a 9 lettered battle called happiness
a 7 lettered victory called dancing
and a 5 lettered defeat called shame
Life is a double mastectomy
it is two lips interlocked
life is a eulogy is the most words i’ve ever heard your father speak
life is an eternal definition
life is “i’m never going to be able to eat peach cobbler again”
i realized that about the same time i knew i did not need a magnifying glass to prove to my mom that her bald body is flawless