the windows open on the first warm June night–humid and occupied–with the sound of crickets–serves as a time machine
Like the hour of the night in which I wake to write,
I was 11 going on 12,
which is to say, what I knew, I knew
through the body.
So that even after my mother came back,
and I relaxed again in her steady presence,
I did so at a loss to her.
Not the loss of the bottle.
But the word: NO.
Her sense of self, beyond role.
A small bit of wild seeking space to take hold.
Barely in her thirties.
A mother of 4.
I should have let her go.
But we needed her.
I needed her.
And so she stayed.
Until she was a mother of 6.
Until she disappeared,
little by little,
from the inside.
Until the flame,
left unattended,
burned like wild fire
through our lives.
The Motherless Muse 