The Mother
A beating, strong, undying.
Her hair, falling in flattened twirls, hanging pathetically, smudged with sweat and grease and dirt, and a bit of purple Play-Doh in the back, hardened and cracking.
Her skin, colorsucked to a dead white, plastered, luminescent, ghostly, unbelievably austere.
Her eyes, two holes, filled maybe, but hardly, round balls, closing, eightballs turned down, stuck and unstuckable, or seemingly so.
Her clothes, severe, scattered rips, color-and-styleblind without care, splotched with food and myriad gobs and goblets, drooping like an unwatered flower, waterless, quite dry now.
Her shoulders, dreary and cumbersome, depressed, hanging there, not without strength but as if bearing up under some great weight, some great heaviness, heavily weighted, a burden, pressing gravity.
Her hands, unclenched, defeated for the moment, with fractured fingernails, nail polish chipped to a pattern of creamy white and fingernail pink, callous, with dark colors in the prints, the indentations.
Her feet, adorned in socks, or stockings, far too poofy for shoes, decorated in a plethora of cartoon kittens, worn when care of self is at an end, quite nearly absolute, a white flag with attitude.
Two boys, before her, her boys, both toddlers or nearly so, dumping the toy bins, shrieking wildly — husband working late — as the neighbors pound on the wall wondering what’s the racket, running now, wrestling, with a sun far, far gone. Much time has passed now, much time without success, the boys banging and whacking, two destroyers.
Finally, where sanity’s steps begin to refuse, a quiet, a stillness, a sort of heavenly peace. She breathes deeply now, a deep inhale, and exhaling now. But a sound. Pattering. Two feet, pittering and pattering at the top of the staircase. Dread building, mounting, quickly. Her hair; her skin; her eyes; her clothes; her shoulders; her hands; her feet.
A small voice.
“Mommy?”
No sound now, silence holding.
And again.
“Mommy?”
With trepidation, “Yes dear?”
“Thankwoo for pwaying wiff me. I wuv you!”
She does not move. Pittering and pattering, and the closing door. Her words fall from her mouth, but there is no sound, no audible sound. I love you, too.
Her heart, still beating, strong, undying, indestructible.
