1913issue6online

206 MY MOTHER In a frenzy one night, my mother’s body finally comes. She’s naked; I can’t see her face because she’s staring at the closet wall, cross-legged, rocking side to side. Her breasts have been cut off, replaced by scar tissue. Her hands are on her knees, her hair made of muddy string, her skin yellow; her knuckles are scarred, her fingernails jagged and thick with dirt. She says, Try not to mope, try to keep your head back and your eyes dry, go on with your life. You have no life to go on with; mope, cry, put your head down as far as it can possibly go and let the ocean of autumn tear into your retinas until you have no eyes, just sponges of blood. Feel your pain like it’s a body you might never hold again, then let it go. Here, read this book by this re- ally smart man. Don’t pay attention to the boiling meta-boat of emotion in your inner ear, your Eustachian tube. Your nostrils. Your shins. The place under your knees. You don’t know what that bone is called, do you? Make a map of your body-uni- verse; it’s circular. Spherical. Sometimes cone-like. Never flat, like the ground in a valley. Never going up. Find whatever you need to find. Go ride bikes in your mind’s mine field. Ride your bike along the path over the bridge, way above the river. Ride your bike into the corn stalks; be careful. Be free, but don’t ex- plode. The dirt is tilled, dry; the stalks are shrunken, the fruit stand is closed. There are rotten pumpkins on the ground. You can eat them if you want. To eat is beautiful. I tell her, I don’t have a bike. I don’t have a field, Mother. I don’t even own one cornstalk. -Carolyn Zaikowski

1913issue6online

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