Diety

"For my darling three.
I couldn't face my demons without you."


"Not Now."

Words that echoed through me,
telling me to wait,
just for a minute.

"I need to write."

My mother spoke the phrase,
viciously, desperately.
Like a drunk would say,
"C'mon man, just pour me one."

She would turn from her work, wild eyed.
Hair hastily tucked back behind ears,
Glowing cherry of her requisite Virginia Slim
dangling, barely there, from her lips.

The incessant typing moved at a pace that dizzied me,
turned me inside out as I was watched the screen
fill with words,
lovely lopsided words;
a whole world created in my mother's head,
placed here on earth for us mere mortals to live in.

Hours would pass, sometimes days
with me perched
behind her and just a little to her right.
Mesmerized by her frenzy,
and a little frightened.

"Mama?
A bowl of soup?
Some crackers?
Mama, how long's it been?"

"Shh… I'll take a break at 3000 words, darling."
But she didn't.

Somehow the stories fed her, as they ate her alive -
a sort of literary perpetual motion machine,
but too thin and with chewed up fingernails.

"Bean!" she called to me in exhaustion and exasperation –
"I need a word… I need a word.
Ummm, not Futile,
not Pointless,
Something better. You know,
Something More."

"Trifling?
Ineffectual?
Vapid?"

A trilling triumphant laugh and
a conspiratorial smile were
my sweet reward.
"Ah, yes! Vapid.
Perfect, my girl."

My vigil paid off.
She let me in to her soul and
I got to be part of it too.

Part of the construction and assembly
that consumed her until
she seemed sometimes nothing
more than tired eyes,
stooped back,
coffee cup
and flying fingers.

I got to be part of her.