index | archives | notes Friday, May. 20, 2022 9:25 p.m. << [ Into the Light ] >> I pry my mother's cold dead fingers, I write, then stop. Back? Pry them back from what? From me? Not me. That would imply her fingers were around me in the first place, would imply that she cared enough to try to dig or hold me in any sort of permanent way. I pry them back from herself? Her heart? No, because under the fingers there is nothing. I pry my mother's cold fingers away from more cold. I peel back nail knuckle knuckle and underneath there is snow where my mother should be. I scream into the mother-shaped void with my surplus of ice and digits. I pry my mother's indifference off of me, and underneath I find her despair and her disdain. I watch her roll the thought of me around in her mouth, the way she curls her lip as I bump against her teeth, too big, too fat, too clumsy, too loud, needing too much. I sat in a room filled with women whom I mother, and these women chirped about their mothers as confidants and best friends and sources of strength and rocks. I thought about my mother telling me I'm difficult. I thought about my mother telling me I need to apologize to my father because he hit me. My mother, all stalagmites and stalactites, freezing to death because it never occurred to her to move towards the warmth. << | x | >> whatiscopyright.org