Comedy by Rachel Eliza Griffiths

Comedy

 

I am here before the nurse brings my mother breakfast.

I study her body. Try to remember if I ever caught my mother

in the dream I had the night before where the hem of her

gown flew through a silver tunnel without end. Her skin

went right through my hands whenever I was close enough

to save her. She slipped through her name, her name I could not stop

calling until I sat up alone in my crib. Embarrassed, she tells me

she remembers how she phoned me last night to let me know

she was in the morgue. She laughs as the nurse, whose feet squeak

in Minnie Mouse Crocs, arrives with tea. We watch the nurse

with eyes that will never remember her face. Thank her

for the toast that is thicker than my mother’s hand.

That morphine is some powerful shit, my mother says.

I agree with her as though she has merely mentioned it is cold

outside though I have rarely had morphine &

have never made courtesy calls from a morgue. It was late

& I didn’t know where I was, she says. Because that wasn’t death,

which means I couldn’t have called you from that place.

This is my new mother, who has finally admitted fear

into the raw ward of her heart. This is my mother who flew away

from my grasp in the tunnel without end. The woman

who could not wait for me to grab the white edge

of where she was going. I was afraid, she says. Looking

over the rim of her plastic cup, she shakes the world. Chipped

ice between us. Yeah don’t go & write about me like that,

she says. I already know you.