Mommy Makeover
She smoked
tobacco, weed, hash,
methamphetamine
and drank.
Ate fast food
slow, candy quick.
If she did a
colonic biohazardous
waste would flush
from her, choke
those not suited
up in hazmat suits.
Beer and wine
stocked the fridge, liquor
the cabinet,
bottle a hooch in her backpack.
Glaze like a
doughnuts, oiled her hair.
Her skin pocked
with pimples, Twizzler skinny,
black luggage
bagged below her eyes.
One afternoon,
wasted from swigs she’d disguised
with body spray
and cloves, the mother
she’d never met
shook her from her stupor and pushed
her through the
glass doors of a clinic.
When the doctor
deduced she was carrying something
other than general
alcohol addiction, the cloth of mother-hood
convinced her to
clear her dry
throat and beseech
his assistance.
In meetings, she
grew and grew, sucking
lollipops down to
the wick, listening to stories
about plummeting
rock bottoms. Delivering,
her head hung
under a bandanna of shame,
a prayer circle
worshipped God.
By some fluke,
she’d stashed
savings from her
job as a cashier,
home when her
water dropped on her sandals,
and seeped into
the linoleum’s grout.
In hospital, labour
strung her hella out.
She did not scream
for an epidural,
nor did she for
benzodiazepines. She clenched
the responsibility
of sobriety
in her
squeaky-clean fist.
Holding her baby,
supporting her little blonde
thin haired head,
bawling, vernix-slick,
she signed a
post-natal promise. Promising
to mother her
real, mother her good.
Believing for the
first time, she could.
The Flirtation of A Fantasy
Cool air embraced
my room with a comforting chill.
Rains had fallen
for weeks which poured over into other
weeks, greening
brown mountains, dirt grounds, tan slopes:
Kelly green
chaparral gone crazy, salt bushes running amok,
lupine purpling
pointing skyward toward a sheet of grey.
It’d been the most
rainfall in Los Angeles County since
anyone could
recall. Along with its beauty it behest
overflowing
drains, flooded gutters, closed lanes, caused
mudslides and
created nostalgia, fecundity
cultivated from
the soil of a friendship which withered
when she fell
headfirst for me. Feeling contrition
for leading her up
a botanical garden’s path imbedded
with the
flirtation of a fantasy, I spread mulch
with a trowel in a
field of apologies, wishing for the gloom
of June to be
gone, the hazards to be cleared,
and for her to be
my friend, again.
Chemical Bonding
I liked to lie in
the lateral position. Opposite the window
and luminosity of
the moon reflecting off the valley of inclines.
A fleece blanket
covered me to my chin, flannel
pajamas with
marijuana leaf motifs my body, pink fuzzy socks my feet.
I wasn’t sure
whether he’d entered through the side door I left open
in a chamber of my
heart, or whether he gained access
by the key I kept
on the chain linking the moments
I missed him. Musk
and Ethanol lingered, traces of aftershave, a laboratory.
A meaty arm
bundled around me
in the manner of a
rolled-up mattress.
He hadn’t come to
get lucky. He came for propinquity past.
The couple who sky
dived
1800 feet above
Santa Barbara, rode round Canyons
on a Yamaha with
bikers then bailed to cruise our own adventure.
Incompatible
chemicals unable to be arranged
into a structure
because we formed
a compound which
blew up with lies. I didn’t confront
him when I heard
he’d been at a restaurant on the west side with her.
I shut my mouth
when I saw make-up on his Henley—a shade
too light for me. My
efforts
to neutralize the
situation only increased acidity of the facts.
The fact I’d
fallen for him with tremendous potency.
And certain he’d
strip from me if I reacted, I didn’t.
No one’s ever
gonna love me as much as you do, he said,
when our
relationship reached the point of combustion,
and he sped off,
twisting the throttle to his motorbike.
I feared if I
faced him he would dissolve as fast
as the sugar did
in the chamomile tea
I stirred and
stared at, hoping to spot his winsome reflection.
In the morning, the
bucket helmet he had me wear when we rode,
hooked over the
banister of my bed.
The Babe he’d
painted on with permanent marker didn’t have one scratch.
I Almost Died
Stark walls
encased harsh fluorescent lighting boxing
in bleached
sterilization. Tubes funnelled charcoal,
monitors read a
heart rate; oxygen supplied. Golden effulgence glowed
in the upper
right-hand cornice, the corner point where the ceiling been mortared
to the wall. As a
fixture attached to plaster by a cord a surgeon’s knife
could never sever,
I watched myself in restraints,
nurses adjusted
prongs inside my nose,
endotracheal
intubation in my throat,
checked sensors on
my chest, administering the doctors directions.
Sixty Valiums and
two shots of whisky and I was still here.
A doorway
appeared. Then an angel inside a tympanum gilded in filigree.
Her blonde curls
cascaded along the boat neck of her lilac
taffeta gown. She
could have been Dianne Wiest with her button nose,
arched eyebrows,
and her cheeks lifting with her Duchenne smile.
Rather than an
Oscar, a sceptre was abreast of her. She greeted me the way a mother
welcomes a
daughter home from school:
love and
endearment parcelled around an expectancy
you’re never weary
waiting for.
With elocution
like marmalade layered on a slice of whole wheat toast
you’d keep warm on
the toaster and save, she said, Not yet.
Solar panels
located in the outermost stations of space
generate our
affinity, grounding us in our own orbit
at Inn and Out
Burger. In the opening on the Formica,
he sets his hand
near my sleeve,
tells me he loves
me. I yearn to reply
in kind with
ketchup, but I shove a fist-
full of fries in
my mouth and reply, Tasty.
We hold our hearts
in our hands
like candy apples
on sticks, showing off
their gleam with
the radius of our smiles.
Astronomers
without telescopes, we refrain to study the optics
of this phenomenon
and meet in the atrium
at the library.
Gawking at each other smitten and stupid,
him shifting his
feet, me smiling, my mouth curling
upwards defying
the law of gravitation, until, stuff it, I leap
all in, hurl my
cautionary tactics and concerns
into the central
air-conditioning system and reply, Love you too.
By Kathylynne Somerville
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