Carol Lynn Stevenson Grellas

A Letter to my Mother

Carol Lynn Stevenson Grellas

This morning while getting ready, I saw that mole again. The one I'd had removed years ago. The one that was there when I was eight when you told me to run

from the house in my yellow nightgown the daisies stitched like a handmade necklace around its yoke trimmed with lace.

You were angry with me then, I wasn't dressed, my hair unbrushed and knotted with curl. Outside a tiny bird lay on the pavement, I watched as its wings

gleamed in sunlight, emerald blue and turquoise, its body working hard like a fine machine pumping it over and over again, with some intangible thing

called hope, one eye open, the other smashed against the cement. I wondered if it knew death was calling it home. To die alone I thought, must be worse than living

without love, for something so final to be left unshared, to lie on the coldness of the unknown, await your last breath imbued with a second cruelty, the scent of jasmine wafting near

your lungs, inhaling one final time just to keep the fragrance of life inside you like a consolation for letting go. I felt compelled to stay there, to say no to you, so I could pause beside

that little bird until it was emptied of air but you said come quick, come quick before your father finds us. That mole was just a blemish on my face back then, a place

where tears would roll and exaggerate its size. I would remove it when I was twenty-five, my then new husband asking the doctor to cut it off— a silver scalpel in his right hand

when he said, what it must be to ask someone so young to eliminate a piece of them, to see their own skin as a flaw rather than a mark of beauty. It made you cry when I told you

what happened. That marriage was doomed from the start, but being feminine in those days meant being willing to endure what was asked. That little bird must have heard my father

firing his gun, an interruption in the calm, a reason to fly into glass thinking the sky was a mirror instead of a window, where I stood as you yelled at me for my tardiness, for my

indecency of forgetting underwear as if I should have known better, to always be prepared for the day your father comes after you with a gun, or to have the choice

not to run when a little bird might be startled in the midst of pandemonium, as if it was only waiting not to be alone, or for me to place a chrysanthemum leaf beneath

one wing, and touch it with my fingertip, defying you when you said, come quick. And just today that mole has appeared again, like a marker or an asterisk on skin,

so I'd remember when I look at my reflection to always hear you calling me and to be there for the little bird nearing unfettered space— to next time pick it up, pick it up

and cradle it against my face.

Bedroom Mugwump

Carol LynnStevenson Grellas

I’d ask you for a cigarette but I don’t smoke and it’s not very sexy to hold an unlit roll-up between my fingers. You on the other hand are very suggestive laying there all hair mussed and topless; your chest covered in sweat. I’ve always found you most attractive when you’re angry. I know it’s not right to admit that kind of thing. But there’s something beautiful about the way your upper lip curls and your eyes twitch when you’re on the verge of swearing at me and I give up my bitch-face which I think turns you on too. So let’s not argue about who’s better at playing this game. Let’s agree to disagree so I can roll my eyes and undress with my most tempting scowl in front of the evening window. I’ll wait for a few curse words and see what happens with the moonlight as our flare.

Carol Lynn Stevenson Grellas lives in the Sierra Foothills of Califoria. She studied at Santa Clara University, where she was an English major. She is an eight-time Pushcart nominee, a five-time Best of the Net nominee and the author of the following collections of poetry: Epistemology of an Odd Girl, Hasty Notes in No Particular Order, Letters Under the Banyan Tree, The Wanderer’s Dominion, Breakfast in Winter, and the winning chapbook in The Red Ochre Chapbook Contest, Before I Go to Sleep. Her work has appeared in: The Yale Journal for Humanities in Medicine, Poets and Artists, War, Literature and the Arts. She is the Assistant Editor for The Orchards Poetry Journal and a member of the Sacramento group of poets called Writers on Air. According to family lore, she is a direct descendant of Robert Louis Stevenson. www.clgrellaspoetry.com