100719

Tall time to call your ma
Hey ma  Hey ma
What's your favorite color?  One time you said it was red.
You smoked Marlboro Reds.
I always liked the smell of that first puff.
I did not like when you'd lick your finger to rub something off my face.
Dried cigarette saliva.
Hey ma.  How can the moon & sun be in the sky at the same time?
What if they collide?
In a bedroom in California I was helpless as you cried.
Artichokes & mayonaisse.  Greyhound exhaust.
We hitchhiked & I dreamed the car drove away with me running behind.
I don't know what happened between you & my dad.
You & my brothers' dad.
You & my sister's dad.
People are tricky.  People suck.  We suck.
I never told you I stomped on your mood ring.
I panicked & hid it in the junk drawer, afraid I had released a spirit.
Six white horses, coming two by two.
Coming for my mother no matter how I love her.
When did I start swallowing my anger?

I love my siblings but I miss when it was just us.
Your granny glasses and embroidered bells.
Macrame owls & guinea pigs.
Pigs in a blanket & shit on a shingle.
The kitchen wallpapered in Sunday comics.
I heard you singing Landslide when you thought I was asleep.
The radio was always on, glowing in the dark.
But the scenery changes around us & we become different versions of ourselves.
And again & again.  A rolodex of alternate lives.
You're smiling, serving cotton candy at a carnival in Georgia.
You're pregnant & lost in thought, driving a truck through the desert.
You're drunk on an old man's moonshine, driving your children into a ditch.
Hey ma.  Why do people hurt each other?  When is love not enough?
Because when a man punches your mother you start planning ways to kill him.
And that's all I wanna say about that.
I wanted you to believe in yourself.
I wanted you to turn that bad-hand-dealt into an assassin's fan.
I wanted you to feel like you'd lived before you died.
I called you my doorway into the world & you laughed.

The sun is weak & the moon's a smudge of chalk on an October afternoon,
and living isn't winning, living is living.  We love who we love.
My little boy arms couldn't keep you here.
My Amazon playlist of 70's hits didn't make the tumor disappear.
Hey ma.  I still have so many questions.