Dear Wigleaf,

My mom came by this morning.

I guess it went bad, I said as I stood in my new kitchen, the tile under my bare feet so cold it burned my skin. She stared at me in that raw, chafing way that she never meant to have. It was a thing I provoked in her. An unintended hatred. A long simmering resentment.

She rested a long spindly hand, the forerunner of my own, on her hip and I watched her cheeks draw in as she sucked at the back of her teeth, a habit we shared. She gracefully tilted her body into to the fridge and pulled out the raw, stinking chicken—so heavily packaged and chilled I could not fathom how the meat had turned. I held open a grocery bag and she dumped it in and wiped the invisible putrid vapor away from her palms.

The plastic crinkled as I tied it and I could feel her eyes on my actions. I should have taught you better, she said. I sighed and wondered at my mom—at her own cold feet, long hands and round hips, at her own inability to keep a thing from turning rancid.

How was your morning?

Love,

Rose






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Read RS's story, "Displays of Aquatic Escape Behavior."

w i g · l e a F               04-10-10                                [home]