granted, suffering

There’s something wrong with the way she says good morning.

Exhausted from waking up, barely holding onto her lips,
Her words sound like grapes and taste like raisins.
At 7:00 her skin shines in coconut oil,

By noon, her eyelids smudged black and hair burnt.

 

There’s something wrong with the way she asks,

Does this look alright?

And it does.
Too dressy for a weekly poker game,
Too much cleavage for his liking,
Too much perfume with just enough Marlboro.

 

There’s something wrong with the way she says goodnight.
She pulls out one of those travel mirrors from her purse and reapplies her mascara

under the dining room chandelier
He looks at me, rolling his eyes because that’s just so     her.
She looks at me, eyes dilated and wired, and kisses my cheek
Before stumbling up the stairs.

granted,

She once told me of the summer she got a tandem bike.
She and my aunt Jennie would ride all day, the wind cooling off their scalps

as they blazed down a steep hill.
She told me that once, while she was riding on the back, a truck hit
the front end of the bike.
She watched as her little sister flew off.
Dead on a blanket of hot tar.

She once told me of my grandma,

the one I hardly ever saw.
How she had heard the sizzle
of a rotting spoon spewing from her mother’s room.

She once told me of her eighteenth birthday, when she moved her things in with his things.

Then I remember the weekends at my grandpa’s house. Swimming until our elbows are numb
Muffled shouting in the kitchen,
2 AM, leaving early in a taxi

Sharing my bed with the cousins while she and the aunts mix another drink.

What I don’t remember:
Seeing the morning sun through my grandpa’s windows Finishing the game of pool floaty roulette
What everyone was so mad about
Why we always went back.

so,

I call her Mama when she needs me
I text her hoping she won’t call
I ask her about the nights she doesn’t remember
I tell her, I miss you, too! and that I’m coming home soon.

Soon.

The other day I was at work folding tiny clothes when two grandparents walked up

holding a baby girl.
They bounced her in their arms as she reached for a hat and placed it on her head.

Work it lil’ mama! they said, the three of them giggling.

I wondered, if you had ever held me like that

because no one has ever held you like that.