Mother, I Wish
Pushing creativity
I have a good imagination, Daddy. Since you never come to see me. Us together. I imagine everything.
Kids without parents grow wild imaginations. They say things like if and when. They dream dreams big enough to hold safety nets and fathers. Dusty boxes holding happy-parent-photo-albums and singed hope. Because
a child with no father is a feeling. Like a wet blanket. Like a predator stalking through jungle. Like a little girl with poisonous flowers. I think of my daughter and spit up apologies. Then coffee mugs get the words. Not her. I pinch my arm until it hurts. Me beneath tyrant skies. Talking to break-apart-Styrofoam clouds. When it rains I’m a thunderhead.
I swallow my days without chewing. Wake up on rusted iron mornings and pouch shortcomings like chaw. A lot of days the past gets all my thought, and it’s hard to pay it forward when I’m sending reparations into the past. I don’t know where I would be without my imagination. I bet you know about some of the stories it’s invented. Some people might even call a few genius.
They’re nothing compared to the stories that kept me alive. The imaginary friends, stuffed animals come to life every night, little black boy, bone white three-quarter moon in the corner of my room when it got really bad.
When I looked at the corner of the room I learned to see small. Find a tiny dot. Walnut colored, on the wall, shaped like a birthmark. Focus until the world disappeared away. Hold creativity until a new world appeared. A world where I was safe. In the army they said: aim small, miss small. But I was just a boy. A ways out from the army. A ways away from freedom.
I don’t have to call anyone on anything ever. They give themselves away all on their own. Who’s been through it. Who knows sum’thin bout hell. Every time someone tells me to forgive and forget like it’s something you do once and walk away from forever. I don’t waste my breath. I have forgiven her a thousand times and meant it every time. I still hate her. Ain’t no God can change that.
No person gets to grab at my hate like it’s dry sticks to light their campfires. Nobody gets to collect up my bones like tinder. When I choose to burn I burn. How I die on the forest floor — that’s up to me. You keep on your side of the battlefield. I’ll keep on mine.
Mother’s Day is hard. I say: you help me through Mother’s Day and I’ll help you through Father’s Day. Then we smile through tears, eat Oriental salad and pretend we’re okay. The pretending don’t last long. Then we’re back to tears eroding stone.
Some days I am an ocean of forgiveness. Enough water for a person to dive safely. Splash. Make love. Some days I am vast enough for shipping vessels. Sea lanes upon sea lanes. Other days I’m an empty city pool.
Oh oh oh. Those kids with their imaginations. Drawing chalk doors on the sides of elementary schools. Walking through them. Children pick up crayons and markers and chalk and paintbrushes when escaping from a place and adventuring to a place become the same thing.
Mother, I wish. I could show your granddaughter. I wish I could buy you that Mercedes I promised when I was nothing but eight-year-old love for you. I wish I could send you to Jerusalem to walk the stars like stairs. I wish. I wish I could tell you I love you and mean it. I wish I could confide in the heights of your midnight blue black hair and cry cry cry with the sorrow of an abandoned bird. I wish we had time. And forgiveness. Hope and a little vision going other places besides forward and back. I wish. I wish.
Oh honey.
Yes daddy?
My god, do you know how I love you? Do you know? Do you. Know?
Yes daddy.
You sure?
Yes.
Hey, I’m Roman. I’m working on my debut novel, 20xx, a work in magical realism. I write on Substack.
Lost my words and you found them
Glad I found you, rummaging in my trashcan heart.