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Wet cement.
Siren lips...dripping voluptuous red, round as rose hips. Beckoning calls above the fish nets. She struts in constant confidence of her ebony freckles, and womanly ways. She is majesty. She is Royal of her world. Stiletto heels spike for justice of the flesh with every curvacious step on the cobbled wet cement. Almighty huntress of the night.
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He sent her a letter
full of vitriol and lies. He flavored the paper with words from a dead mans mouth. He said he would never trust her again after what she had done to their Dad. He said she abused him. He said she stole the funeral money. But it was all bullshit. What a conscious sin. He pierced his sister's heart with his own well built grief. Accused of being a thief, and a liar at best. But she knew better. She was there, she rubbed his itchy back, trimmed the toenails he couldn't reach, she washed and folded his underwear, she lifted him off the floor. If there was any doubt about her love for the man that gave her life, the man who built her, it should have been questioned in life. Questioned while their Father was still breathing. But he waited... and sent his fucking parcel in death... She sent it back to him. Dumped his trash back onto his porch of proud vitriol and lies. He appears to be just fine.
Smiles under a ball cap that shine with every salutation. Shake hands, have a doughnut, shoot the shit. That's it, right? Harmless banter and punch lines echo in a crowded conference room. But he's not fine, not when the stillness sets its discourse down. Loneliness radiates in flattened dark colors that permeate through his aura. No one can see it, but I can feel it with every passing by. A silent, invisible flag that waves over the oak adjustable threshold of an empty house. So as I reach the same age that my Mother was the day she gave birth to me, the sun is shining a normally abnormal glow. I rarely see the sun on my birthday. There are a few past years when the sun shined down through the blizzard like conditions, but I couldn’t tell you which years those rare events happened. Maybe in my teenage years, maybe when I was just a kid.
I am forty years old today, and I miss my Mom immensely. Some people like to say that time heals all wounds, but that is not completely accurate. Time simply allows us to grow accustomed to walking around with holes. Time helps us adjust, but the wounds never officially heal. No. The wounds are always open, and most of the time that is a good thing, because it lets the air in. However, that also means that those wounds will occasionally gather particles from the air and those little bits can start to fester until the wounds are washed out with tears. Anyone who has lost someone that they loved with every fiber of their being will understand what I am talking about. Grief never goes away; it just gets placed on a shelf inside of us. Sometimes, we dust it off, other times the vibrations of life wiggle the grief until it falls off of that shelf and comes crashing down…smashing to bits at our feet. It is those times when we have to pick it back up, ever so gently glue it back together and place it yet again on that shelf inside of us, those times never get any easier. I am hoping today is not one of those times, but it usually is. I don’t want to let the vibrations of life knock things off my shelves, but it happens. My birthday reminds me of my Mom. She is the reason for this day, and I can’t help but wish that she was still here. Saying that, I feel selfish. I feel selfish because she is not the only one that is missing from the everyday. Dad is gone too, and so are my brothers. One brother is literally gone…the others are figuratively. My grandparents are no longer in this world; Aunts, Uncles, as well as some very good friends have all passed over. I have moments when I get so angry. I get angry because I knew, even when I was a small child, I knew that I was getting screwed over. That sounds so bratty, and ungrateful, doesn’t it? Oh poor me, poor, poor me. I am not ungrateful. I have been extremely blessed in my life and I wish not to discredit those blessings, but I am also a realist and I am not going to ignore what I occasionally feel inside of my soul. I am forty years old today. My Mother was forty when I was born on a cold, snowy January day. I really have no idea what it was like outside that day. If I had the opportunity to hear it straight from my Mother’s mouth, I was too young to realize the magnitude of worth in seizing that moment. Many mothers and daughters butt heads, and my Mom and I were no different. We fought like crazy all though my teenage years. Stupid teenage angst, hormones and hot-headedness. Now that I am a Mother myself, I fully grasp all the many times when my Mom said “You’ll understand when you have children of your own”. She was right. I do understand. I understand that Mom loved every one of her children, all in different ways…and yet still equal in strength. So why is it that I get angry? I get angry because my daughters will never get to enjoy their Nana. They will never get to be scolded by her, or have their hair cut by her steady and knowing hands. They will never get to see her sipping her cup of tea while reading a romance novel, or see her smile at them. They will never truly experience the way their Nana sounded when she spoke, with her Irish brogue that sounded so normal to me. I can only hope to keep my Mother alive in my girls through stories, through pictures, and through the occasional yet rare video tape my sister had recorded years ago. Even all of these reasons are selfish, and I am ok with that. To be honest, my daughters don’t know any different. Nana has been in heaven since before they were born. So it is merely self-serving for me to be angry about her absence in their lives. I know this. But it still happens. I do still get twinges of anger that life couldn’t grant me the wonderful experience of having my Mom, while I am a Mom myself. I guess that is the tradeoff of being born last in line. My older siblings (I have six other siblings still alive) have always carried a chip on their shoulder because I was the youngest. Most of them blame me, but I understand that their anger towards me is displaced. How could being born last in line possibly be my fault? Some of them have always referred to me as “spoiled”. It took me years to understand how and why they viewed me this way. They are correct in many ways. I wasn’t spoiled with gifts, I didn’t get anything I wanted from my parents, but I did get a lot of one particular thing from my folks that they may not have. Time. I did get a LOT of time with my parents. It is funny peculiar though, because the time that I had was gifted to me when I was young, and immature. Time was given to me when I didn’t realize the value of it. I didn’t realize how precious that time was. I didn’t realize how fleeting time can really be. I do now though, of course, in retrospect. I was actually quite blessed to have been born the youngest in my family, but there was a tradeoff that I do not recall signing up for. Yes, I had more one on one time with my parents. By the time I was in high school, all of my siblings had moved out and had families of their own. Because of this sequence of birth order, I had oodles of time to spend with Mom and Dad while no one else was grabbing for their attention. I have a ton of memories of things I did with my parents, places I went with them, time spent together…and I share most of those memories with no one else but myself. In that aspect, I WAS spoiled. But I never chose it that way. Life just happened in that order. The tradeoff for this is that now that I am older, and life has matured me…I don’t get to have my parents around while I am raising my own kids. I don’t get to have those heart to heart conversations with my Mother, as friends. I don’t get to have her knowledge passed down to me when I could really use it the most. But, that’s ok. For in her place, life has given me other Mothers, and Fathers. Now, I have two Mother-In-laws, a Grandmother In-Law, and a Husband who loves our children (and me) immensely. I have two Fathers-In-Law, and a Grandfather In-Law, all whom I love a great deal. I miss my Mom. I miss my Dad. I miss my brothers…most of them. I miss my Grandparents, Aunts, Uncles, and friends who have all traveled on before me. I will continue to miss them every single day, but they are all still here with me…in these holes in my heart…sitting on this shelf inside of me. Today, they all reflect the sun, on my fortieth birthday, and I feel blessed. A hot bed of coals he was.
A fiery, burning ember of sin. She wanted...no, she pined to let him in. But the voice in her head said no, he wouldn't be strong enough to contain the savage wild child that played just under her surface. A hot bed of coals would only suffice for a night before it simmered into ash. She needed more than that. She needed a firm footing that never buckled, never fucked off and was never insulted by her brazenness. She needed a sustainable ember of sin. One with thick skin that didn't wear lacy panties. A hot bed of coals he was... but he would never survive her fire. Indignation in all of its
finest forms lying on the wire racks of consumption. Ten o'clock in the dark sky a child cries for night night but the words aren't built for his little body yet, and only stumbles out in frustrated tears. Mommas fed up, shopping cart full of frozen pizza, maxi pads and beer... She shuffles her slippered feet and tells him to shut the fuck up. Ten o'clock at night and he only wants snuggles and warm hands to stroke his tired head... but he's at the store instead. Babies should be in bed. But the beer can't wait, and baby daddy needs his corn dogs and pretzel chips. Momma muffles baby's mouth with a lollipop as she shops for all things consumable. Love can't be bought. Its nowhere on the end caps late at night. Baby stuck in the cart with a fatigued heart and a longing for something steady that he can't explain. **inspired by the Wicked Writing Prompt - You can't buy THAT at Walmart** If there was something
you wanted to tell me, you had best say it now. For as I speak, my floor boards creak as those mother fuckers pull my cabinets from my walls. I know my days are numbered. I can feel my expiration wafting down my halls of lonely rooms. I’ve always been a sanctuary. Love was made and broken, and made again within me. Babies have kept me awake at night, screaming and nursing from their Momma… your Momma…the lady that cries so much. Today, she touched my peeling paint and sobbed, slumped to my floor and told me she was sorry to see me go. I don’t want to go. If there is something you would like to tell me, you had best say it now. I love my family, my people. Even when the young ones wiped me with lipstick and boogers, I always kept them warm. When the teenagers drank with the parents away, I was a safe haven from harm. Beer cans and clutter, the boys pissing on my lawn, and I still loved you folks. All of the bitter sibling battles, heads smashed through my walls to be patched by your Dad… I am so so very sad to see my family go… Now, time is ever present as I watch the bulldozers creep closer to wrecking my shingles and porches. Closer to destroying my memories. I will be a rubbled pile of splinters and shite soon enough. So if there is something you would like to say, you had better speak up Before I am nothing but dust kicked up, and blown away. ** Inspired by the Wicked Writing Prompt - From the Perspective of a house.** Most of the time,
I am strong. A regular foundation of granite and diamonds that twinkle and shine minute reflections of the slimmest light. But...there are moments when my foundation slips...from too much rain mudding down the dirt, too much pain, in my heart of hurts. I know I'm not the only one. But sometimes, memories are too heavy to carry and I find myself wavering in fragments of where I used to be; who I used to be. Remembering my childhood, the days when I felt whole. Now, I'm grown and the folks are gone. The walls have been dismantled and paved with aisles of tampons, hair dye and cough drops. The clubhouse in the garage where my brothers drank stolen beers and blared Ted Nugent on the radio has wasted away to parking spots. My favorite getaway behind the gas station is now a red box of DVDs. My Mother's lilacs now dead in a landfill somewhere... Knowing I'll never smell them again tears me apart sometimes... Memories can be so heavy. The void.
It is insurmountable. Dark, craggy, and full of heavy edges. A walk in the silhouette of blindness. The form of a desolate tunnel of weight. All of the doors welded shut with suffocation. The void. A burning hole where love was. She is my Princess.
Delicate as the tiny lace daffodils embroidered on her silky night gown. The way that her ice blue eyes pierce through my soul makes me shiver with delight. Such a treat to come home from work and hold her porcelain, pasty-white hands while she stares into the depths of my cavern. She never asks for much. The stitches in her lips never let her. Once, I removed them, and her antiqued beauty seeped down her chin. so I never dared remove them again. She prefers her jaw glued shut but it turns me off. I much prefer her jaws stuffed with bits of me. She is my Princess, silent and still like brittle blades of grass baked in the summer sun. Once, I tried to dance with her, but when her stiff legs hit the floor, they disconnected from her boney knees and it pleased me none. Now she stays in the deep freeze. My frozen, crystalline Princess. **Inspired by the Wicked Writing Prompt: Zombie Love.** For this new year,
I resolve to not listen to the fucked up news in America. It only grows uptight bitterness and paranoia. I resolve to not shave my legs until the hostas tell me its time to do so. For this new year, I resolve to not take a shit at work or in other public places, if I can help it. I resolve to not hang any soiled panties up on social media because nobody cares to view those nasty things. For this new year, I resolve to walk my dog so he CAN crap in that one "special" neighbor's yard and I will not bring a grocery bag to pick up his bits. I resolve what is good for the goose, is also good for that asshole. I resolve to spread the love. One dog pile at a time. For this new year, I resolve to stop making resolutions. |
AuthorMolly Roland is a writer by nature, and she enjoys stepping over the invisible lines society loves to draw. Categories |
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