CHRISTOPHER WATTS
PHOENIX My mother died when I was seventeen and every third Thursday of the month since, a letter from her comes in the mail. At first I was surprised, pissed actually, thinking it was someone’s idea of a joke. When it turned out not to be, I thought it would end up as some sappy gesture she cooked up on her death to help me remember her and heal. As if the remedy to a gunshot wound was a Band-Aid rolled in thumbtacks. I guess that ended up being the problem, they didn’t just remind me of her, they wouldn’t stop. Month after month, year after year and after seven years they haven’t faltered. Mostly she complains about the weather in Phoenix. An anomaly I can’t begin to understand since she was born in Delaware, lived in Massachusetts most of her life, and died in Minnesota. From what I know, she never visited the Southwest. Maybe it was a dream of hers, maybe she used to sit in bed crying, holding a post card from the Grand Canyon that said “Heaven’s Playground Wishes You Well!!” while my father stumbled out the door and my brother and me cowered in the corner to lick our wounds. I suppose I don’t really remember. “It’s too hot!” she cries in the letters. Time after time, “It’s too god damned hot!!” She asks me questions in the letters. More questions than she ever asked me when she was alive. Back then we talked on the phone once every six months, and most 119
