Armando Jaramillo Garcia, Chandelier Shop, Ridgewood, NY (Artist Instagram)
Photograph, Sony a6000 digital camera
My mother has lost words she looms between tries to capture meaning in obscure
pronunciation a bird clawing syllables on tree branches the gas has been left on again and there
is no fire she tells me do you hear me you never listen to me no one ever listens to me
her head injury has made emotion collapsible intensity shifts anger is pervasive and comes
on quick my mother could out scream a bear with her sorrow the bird is back she says
points to it it is her echo there is a nest outside her window which she says as widow she
wishes for a return I used to be able to remember just absence the songs she loved she can
only hum sifts through melody in her dreams she says she always knows what to say my
mother keeps her television on the Weather Channel she needs to know she says what is
to come the swirling colors of impending storms no place matters too little she always
keeps the door open when it storms I remember walking along Emerald Isle after
a hurricane scouring the shoreline for what could be discovered delivered anew dead
baby sharks a dresser with clothes still intact driftwood shells my mother seemed to believe
everything had a use we make what we can at will just imagine I’ve re-worn clothes from her
youth a silk shirt her friend Marge bought her in Texas a velvet burgundy dress from her
sister’s wedding things that weren’t meant to be kept found solace in her closet she
kept a pair of ballet flats believing they were my pointe shoes this is what happens when
you get older she says does it matter what the symbol is when we already know what it symbolizes
we all hold onto things the contours of sentimentality I keep a box under my bed the
door is open and a storm roams wind brocading rain let’s just stand here for a little while
longer on the cusp of misremembering all the while the tv permeates the room calling
for a warning it is here rotating swirls of color over our heads my mother remembers
the stove is on goes to turn it off my mother carries words in her chest she says she knows
but cannot say