Mother

In North Carolina, a wooden floored, musty smelling cabin bared her presence. The ordinary vibrated. She’s sitting on a faux leather couch in the right end of the living room. With feet rested upon the polyester carpet that was in a need of a cleaning, she cupped a coffee mug housing steaming black coffee in both of her hands. You could see the rings of water damage she left on the side table. Below the dim lit lamp, the oil on her nose shined, the gray hairs in her roots glistened, and her brown eyes showed sincerity. Her legs were crossed, and she was wearing sweatpants and a duran duran knockoff concert t-shirt, the kinds you buy in the parking lots of concerts. Her wedding band was slightly cutting off her circulation, but the light didn’t marry it the same way it vowed to her eyes. Her feet blanketed in fuzzy socks because she is always cold, hailed parallel to the ceiling that was cracking above. The remote was kept inside the cracks of the couch cushion, almost like it was the home everyone kept on displacing it from. Sitting still in an image that could easily go unrecognized, her hands were what struck the most. They carry home. They offer a constellation of forces no horizon could hold. Her veins were dark blue and plunging out of her fingers. Smooth and raw, the skin of her hands was where tangibility met wrinkles, utility met calluses, and living met nails with white marks from calcium deficiency. The still-life was frozen in time and lost in time simultaneously and life was lush and hell and rotten and alive. It was a feeling of nothingness and essenceness at the same time. A feeling of a static state filled with vibratory resonance.

Mom