“After the dream, all I can think of is decay.

*

​I was standing in the kitchen with my mother waiting for the water to boil. Teabags already in our mugs; ginger to prepare the fasted stomach. Along with my persistent badgering and her recent blood sugar results, the mounting concerns (read: threats) of her primary care physician has led her to stop taking hers with sugar. ​

​It was the morning after my return from the residency, and the day after the dream. The sky was still dark. I could see nothing through the windows, and secluded as I was in my own mind, I had very quickly forgotten even my mother’s presence. So, when she set her good hand on mine, splayed flat against the countertop, my eyes sprang wide, awakening from a trance. I could tell even she was startled by the unfamiliar contact. Her hand rested there a few beats, made two hesitant taps, then pulled away.

​My mother’s love has never been demonstrably physical, or even verbal. Her love reveals itself in acts of service of indiscriminate scale. Off-hand, I may mention needing a new stapler or a set of notecards or needing to complete a nearly-expired return to an outlet store over an hour away, and before I can make the necessary arrangements, these issues will have been resolved. My mother likes to feel useful. She cannot believe that it is her mere presence that adorns my life.”

“When Nora was thirteen, her mother veiled the bathroom mirror in textbook wrapping paper and prepared herself to swallow a bottle of Panadol.

Earlier that day, Maxine had picked Nora up from school and slipped into Monarch Pharmacy. This visit would seem no different than any other before, so, as always, Nora agreed to wait in the car. Moments later, Maxine returned, and replacing her heels with driving slippers, she set her hands on the wheel and eased into the chaos of Hope Road at rush hour.

In the seat next to her, the paper bag sat upright and menacing. Maxine had been taken hostage.

She kept the radio on but couldn’t listen, her fingers had gone numb, and as she watched them tapping on the wheel, she wondered, without worry, what it could mean that her connection to them had been lost.

Through the windshield, sun rays lashed her skin. Chest rising and falling, she held her face to the sting. Serve her right. Her mother had warned her about him. Her lips trembled, and she held the bottom fold between her teeth and peeled at the split skin. Stinging and briny, the taste of blood emerged. And the sun was a blinding nuisance. But still she held firm, blinking furiously against the punishing white, and the bitter recollections of her own disillusionment.”

“There are times when I feel wholly untethered. When the vastness of life is compounded by its cruelty. Maybe I have heard of yet another unfavorable verdict. Or I have let myself fixate on things outside the bounds of my control. In these moments, I must grab hold of the nearest thing if I hope not to unravel, not to dissipate in whispers of smoke, straining to reconfigure.”