Mama, O mother, you were always there
For supper’s happy chime & story time before prayer.
But then, somehow, somewhere
Like a magician, disastrously skilled
In the art, you disappeared, poof in thin air… and the air chilled… abandoning…abandoning; burdening my amygdala with the enigma of how a family could CHOOSE to drift apart.
Suddenly the ol’ family photo albums seemed haunted; their memories once alive in a green happy-go-lucky glow, zipped away at light-speed, those goddamn crop circles leaving so much to wonder - what did I do wrong? Why were we not wanted?
I remember sitting in the hallway hushed by my brother, listening to you stumble home well past midnight, us all worried sick like every other; I heard the fuss, the cuss, the accusations quick behind closed doors. Unhappiness was ALWAYS dad’s fault, wasn’t it, or whatever else with your bullshit, NEVER yours.
I can’t speak for the rest of my siblings, but with my origami mind no longer immune to shouts and quibbling, so alienated I felt: paper-ball-crumbled and tossed aimless as tumbleweed every afternoon, wondering where’s the mommy I need. I tried and TRIED painting a new reality of “this is only temporary,“ but the rust would just bleed through ‘til soon the dust of where furniture used to be, the late night tears, empty mirrors, the silenced orchestra of your cooking, and the peeling of the living room wallpaper with its sickly looking magnolias all seemed… ordinary & I simply accepted the mal du pays of my family‘s final breath with my father left to fend like one lung without the other, and me, so young.
No mama. No mother.