we start the movie anyway even though we can’t get the picture right. my mother says she never noticed everything on her new partner’s TV was too real. whatever it is that separates film from life is not present. watching, everything appears too close. the water, tangible, her pillow, damp, scent of orange and must. each frame per second works up a sweat, breathes humidity til our closeness leads to rot. nothing can surprise me. the centre is not held. yet. of course. I just want to know what happens next. what happened then
is full and dragging. on the walk through her new hometown she tells us a story about when they lived in a tent and her mother mistook a raccoon for a skunk. it didn’t end how it was supposed to, it ended how it happened: spray came up from the ocean with bad cologne and romance. we almost forget the crying in the background. and as the forest looms she turns at attention to see if I am laughing at the joke of the missing doll on every tree. like the skunk
I’d forgotten I was in a story and averted my gaze, let hers turn me to object — plastic or porcelain, I am not sure. and what will be the right tool to break me? — to spill — that I’m hurt and I cannot tell her because she did not know. on the drive up me and the witness talked about making babies knowing my mother had kept all my toys
upon arrival, I left them alone. my mother whispered to the witness that she’s scared to leave things with me because I might kill them. it might be true but I am not scared of euthanasia. we’ve yelled at each other that we were selfish and stopped holding hands. when she talks at me on sundays sometimes the two weeks of not knowing exactly where she was gestates in pauses. attention is a generosity and a thirst I suck down
the salty water I am handed. I know this is love and I forgive it. she says
this movie could have easily been called The Bad Mother but I disagree,
lost is the word complicated and there it is: the snake biting its tail again
and there is the bed and in the bed is the bellybutton and
there is the morning — on the table
is the orange. what love and duty
and attention did we suppose and
what love and duty and attention were art?
I have surrendered
we start the movie anyway even though we can’t get the picture right. my mother says she never noticed everything on her new partner’s TV was too real. whatever it is that separates film from life is not present. watching, everything appears too close. the water, tangible, her pillow, damp, scent of orange and must. each frame per second works up a sweat, breathes humidity til our closeness leads to rot. nothing can surprise me. the centre is not held. yet. of course. I just want to know what happens next. what happened then
is full and dragging. on the walk through her new hometown she tells us a story about when they lived in a tent and her mother mistook a raccoon for a skunk. it didn’t end how it was supposed to, it ended how it happened: spray came up from the ocean with bad cologne and romance. we almost forget the crying in the background. and as the forest looms she turns at attention to see if I am laughing at the joke of the missing doll on every tree. like the skunk
I’d forgotten I was in a story and averted my gaze, let hers turn me to object — plastic or porcelain, I am not sure. and what will be the right tool to break me? — to spill — that I’m hurt and I cannot tell her because she did not know. on the drive up me and the witness talked about making babies knowing my mother had kept all my toys
upon arrival, I left them alone. my mother whispered to the witness that she’s scared to leave things with me because I might kill them. it might be true but I am not scared of euthanasia. we’ve yelled at each other that we were selfish and stopped holding hands. when she talks at me on sundays sometimes the two weeks of not knowing exactly where she was gestates in pauses. attention is a generosity and a thirst I suck down
the salty water I am handed. I know this is love and I forgive it. she says
this movie could have easily been called The Bad Mother but I disagree,
lost is the word complicated and there it is: the snake biting its tail again
and there is the bed and in the bed is the bellybutton and
there is the morning — on the table
is the orange. what love and duty
and attention did we suppose and
what love and duty and attention were art?
I have surrendered