The stories your mother tells you float in your memory like glass bubbles on the surface of a still pool, uninhibited by time or lineation. Seventeen boyfriends but no idea which came before which. Have you ever seen your mother’s birth certificate? What year was she really born? Break the glass on one lie and make a whole life dangerous.

I don’t yet know
all my wars and how to name them
the neighbor who comes to cry
to our horses at night feeds them apple slices
she prays for her sons

Your mother greets you standardly. Pinch on the widest part of your arm, short embrace. She walks through the field, the yellow shine of buttercups on her ankles. Do you like the taste of butter? She holds a flower to the underside of your neck, your chin in her hand. She twists your head to the side. Sure you do, you’re getting fat. Your mother doesn’t know what it means to hold back. Your mother has at least nineteen past lives. She likes her money where her mouth is. Knows what she wants. Strong woman. Independent woman. Life of the party. The grass grows to kiss her feet. You do not push her hands away you stand just as you have stood before at the bottom of the hill with your face in your mother’s hand and buttercups in the grass and somewhere in another state her lover is in rehab doing well without her.

When your mother asks
where you’re going and
will not accept out
as an answer tell her
you’ll be just a little
south of heaven.

Your mother walks up the hill where the buttercups grow. A cardboard replica of your body is glued to the sky. She answers a question that wasn’t asked. She looks into your cardboard eyes, your cardboard smile. I’ve been praying for you, she says. God hears my prayers. I have seen how you change hour to hour like the sun.

All of my prayers have been offered
to a night that wasn’t listening.
The dark absorbs so many words.
More secrets than the day
which stays zipped in light.
This is how the sky grows.

Your mother has a thing for Ty Dolla $ign.

I know this is absurd, but hear me out.

I think these bitches tryna set me up, maybe I’m just paranoid.
Your mother thinks her lover has a Private Investigator following her.
Or maybe his ex-wife has a Private Investigator following her.
She thinks this because the man parked in front of our house
last Wednesday did not wave back to her when she drove past him.
She says he looked suspicious.
I say he was probably lost.
She says aren’t we all.

You see?
Everyone is a muse to someone.

You ask your mother what she would want you to do if she died. Absolutely nothing. She says you are old enough now to take care of yourself, and you try. But she still pays the phone bill. The car insurance. Your mother pays your bills and she goes out dancing and doesn’t know what shame is. She drinks and drives and it worries you, doesn’t it? She could die. She could die on the way home from dropping the bartender at home. She could die under a horse. She could die for no reason at all. Your cardboard cutout watches her. Eyes persistently open. You sometimes wish you could quit seeing.

On the other hand, you know
your own death will be fantastic.
What a good dead body.
What a cute pile of ash.
What an exceptionally sexy
ghost.

Heartache lives inside you like a stone you have to pass.
You’ll want to see a doctor about this.
You will want to drink alone.
You will want to go to the art museum
and pretend to look melancholy
in photos. You will want to show
everyone these photos.
For proof you were here
and you wanted more.
Heartache can be passed down.
Ask anyone.

Your mother asks a lot of questions.
She likes to sit in her La-Z-Boy chair
and put you in a metaphorical corner.
In the metaphor the corner is purple.
Your cardboard cutout
is headed to sea.

Lights up on two La-Z-Boy chairs.

La-Z-Boy 1: I don’t understand how you sit so still. I’m dying to burst from my body.
La-Z-Boy 2: What does Freedom mean to you? Your response should be in five paragraph formatting including a formal introduction and conclusion. The winner will be featured on the front page of The Rising Sun Herald. Right next to the list of kids who didn’t have cavities this year. Good luck!
La-Z-Boy 1: I don’t know what Freedom means yet.
La-Z-Boy 2: Good luck!

End Scene

It’s becoming more and more difficult to separate reality and fantasy. Do you agree? Shake your head one way or another. This is as much as we can expect for answers. Your cardboard cutout is pulling up to your house, sitting on your roof. You, your mother, the cardboard reproduction of your body—you’ll all go to the same place after you die. This is a picture of an alternate universe.

Time is buffering.

Who is to say we are one place or another.
I live in a honeycomb of my past thoughts.
My future is too big for me to see,
as though I am sitting on the ground
trying to see the top of a hot air balloon.

Your mother will live forever as far as you can tell. You hear her bones crack as she walks up a hill or bends to pick the garlic press out of a lower drawer. You think again about her death and decide it is impossible. You clean out your closet, put everything you hate into a box but decide to keep it after all. Your mother bends and creaks and complains about her weight gain after the divorce and you listen and fidget with whatever is closest to you. You do this for a long, long time. Then, several units of silence.

You look beautiful today, she says.

Your mother is doing the same things she was doing when you left her. Dieting. Making various broccoli casseroles. Lounging in a fleece robe and slippers you bought her for Christmas. If you’re wondering if she’s well you can ask her, but I bet she’ll say oh everything’s the same, other than xyz. This is to say nothing is ever exact, let alone an exact replica.

Imagine an adaptation of your mother’s life, how boring
yet impossible to recreate.

I know this information is difficult to process.
I assure you I am thinking of this
even when I am trying not to think.