I’m standing over your grave, where they’ll lay you to rest. Your voice, in dreams, was clear in my head. “Go home, my child, go.” Tears flowed, as I shouted, “The thing is, mother, you were all I had, you and Aunt Lila were all I ever had, and she was always sick in the hospital until she moved in. And I never met my so-called father either. He left too, when I was born. You refused to speak about him.”
I keep standing there, talking to a pile of dirt, rain falling with tears wondering where the hell everything went wrong? Why did people in the center of my world leave-leave-leave?
“I, n-e-e-d you,” I scream, in the middle of the cemetery where the dead may or may not listen.
The rain’s letting up, I try to wipe it all away, mascara on my hands. I hear blackbirds swishing through the elms. Next, I can almost hear the whisper of my aunt’s voice in the wind, two days ago, when she told me you were gone, holding me like I have never been held before, as I bawled. The cops had called Lila in the wee hours, blue lights flashing near that concrete wall on the highway where your car hydroplaned, the place where you let go, the moment you went to the clouds.
It was the same night we fought, mother, before you stormed out of the house. We argued about house rules for teenagers, homework, dishes, laundry, all the boring stuff, the night you drank too much whiskey, again, hands shaking, the night secrets were revealed. It was the night you told me that you were not my mother, the shock wave rolling through my body, as the heat rose up my neck spreading red over my cheeks like flames. Then, you told me that your sister Lila, the damaged one, asleep upstairs, she, you told me, was my real mother.
She’d been the sister who needed a hit, a quick fix, the one who walked the streets for the next high, the one who named me Summer wrapping me in a gold scarf, the scarf she used to her hide scars, wounds from scums, who had their way with her in an alley for there’s no light on the wrong side of town, no hope. Two weeks old, she’s the sister in tears, who kissed me on both cheeks before she placed me in your arms, giving me to you.
“She gave me to you,” I whisper, over and over, walking in the mist to nowhere. I’d been wandering around for who knows how long, walking until my feet were sore, going to our church when I was thirsty or weary. Sometime after midnight, I found mother’s sofa, drifting in and out of a hazy sleep until I saw her, Lila, standing in a beam of sunlight from one window, a slight smile, eyes as clear as all of God’s jewels in the summer sky.
I keep standing there, talking to a pile of dirt, rain falling with tears wondering where the hell everything went wrong? Why did people in the center of my world leave-leave-leave?
“I, n-e-e-d you,” I scream, in the middle of the cemetery where the dead may or may not listen.
The rain’s letting up, I try to wipe it all away, mascara on my hands. I hear blackbirds swishing through the elms. Next, I can almost hear the whisper of my aunt’s voice in the wind, two days ago, when she told me you were gone, holding me like I have never been held before, as I bawled. The cops had called Lila in the wee hours, blue lights flashing near that concrete wall on the highway where your car hydroplaned, the place where you let go, the moment you went to the clouds.
It was the same night we fought, mother, before you stormed out of the house. We argued about house rules for teenagers, homework, dishes, laundry, all the boring stuff, the night you drank too much whiskey, again, hands shaking, the night secrets were revealed. It was the night you told me that you were not my mother, the shock wave rolling through my body, as the heat rose up my neck spreading red over my cheeks like flames. Then, you told me that your sister Lila, the damaged one, asleep upstairs, she, you told me, was my real mother.
She’d been the sister who needed a hit, a quick fix, the one who walked the streets for the next high, the one who named me Summer wrapping me in a gold scarf, the scarf she used to her hide scars, wounds from scums, who had their way with her in an alley for there’s no light on the wrong side of town, no hope. Two weeks old, she’s the sister in tears, who kissed me on both cheeks before she placed me in your arms, giving me to you.
“She gave me to you,” I whisper, over and over, walking in the mist to nowhere. I’d been wandering around for who knows how long, walking until my feet were sore, going to our church when I was thirsty or weary. Sometime after midnight, I found mother’s sofa, drifting in and out of a hazy sleep until I saw her, Lila, standing in a beam of sunlight from one window, a slight smile, eyes as clear as all of God’s jewels in the summer sky.
