You with your

gentle lightning

spinning like Orion,

full of muscle

and all the patience

of stars.

Hooked upon the pinnacle

of a desire

that arrests

itself,

caught on the crossfires

of what could be,

my mind turns to you:

A pin hole of light

that softly hums

and murmurs

whose blurry edges

beg to come into view.

Silent and serene,

forgetting words, bright

clarity appears before you…

She will tell you. She won’t be able to tell you physically or verbally. Yet, she will communicate in a way you may not know yet. Keep your mind and heart open for signs. Your mother will communicate her wishes if you let her and are willing to listen. Ask her. Ask her what she wants. Then you will know.

__________

There are pictures, the doctor states, of her brain. One side has affected the rest of the body. She may not have full use of her limbs. Her language functioning still exists, but she may be incapable. There is blood. There are seizures and strokes. Nobody can give any answers. People are baffled. Priests are sent. O save me. She may not wake. She is on a ventilator and feeding tube. You wake in the night clawing  your face. Your cats nuzzle your armpit and knead your pillow.

An x-ray of grief. Listen. She is speaking to you.

“The pages are still blank, but there is a miraculous feeling of the words being there, written in invisible ink and clamoring to become visible.”

Vladimir Nabokov

This is Dinosaur Dell. My projector is not aligned. Cold, dark air. Empty rooms.

Carpeted walls, deaf signs, linoleum in the mind. Lights flicker, ghosts. Someone is visiting.

Instructions are “easy,” simple, wordy; I cannot follow. There are no pictures.

Individualized Education: just copy and paste.

Pays attention in class, is cooperative, is easily distracted, is not working to ability:

their children.

They have shoved me into the midst;

I have embraced my baptism by fire.

My belt buckle is the object of his affection; goldfish brightly twisting fins frozen in a watery two-dimension.

Fish fly, he says. Mom fly. I fly.

The truth is hidden. Mom does not fly. She rests underground.

Fish don’t fly. When they pass on, they pass on to life in the sewer, faithfully flushed, mingling among the ruins.

I don’t fly, darling. You are going to Puerto Rico and will not understand where or why you must sit still in a space of 2 by 2 and be quiet for 8 hours, maybe more. You will be pinched.

No, I’m not your mother, darling. The belt buckle you see reminds you of your goldfish that you once flushed down the toilet, but you cannot tell me. Instead, you say fish fly. Mom fly. I fly. Yes, one day. Not yet. When beings disappear, they fly.

What I do not understand is why someone won’t tell you the truth? I will now, for you.