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Over the past few weeks, I have been lulled into false sense of security that everything is going to turn out okay. Every once in a while reality decides to poke up behind me, jailhouse shank in hand, to give me a right stabbing. Just to ensure that I don't grow entirely too complacent. I don't hold anything against reality. After all, I knew what it was when I plucked it from the river.
I stood before the window, the night turning the surface of the glass into a shining mirror, watching my mother's reflected face as I pointed out to her the moon being slowly eaten by a black malignancy. It's always cold in this room, cold and smelling of my alcoholic grandmother's house. I commented on that common smell once last week, to my mother. The smell of stale cigarettes, cheerfully acrid air freshener and despair. She blanched at my remark and turned away from me.
The sly cold seeps into the room from the windows, right through their smooth and bland faces to crawl across my skin. It's doing it now, as I stand here and talk to my mother of years long past. Of another eclipse that I witnessed during a snow storm, standing in front of my old bookstore. Hand in hand with Anastasia, peering between great gusts of snowy wind to witness the moon being gnawed alive. I didn't tell my mother how sadness filled my heart that night, how it had been there for so long and how it wouldn't leave for even longer to come. A love affair gone awry, a marriage gone bleakly sour and I in the middle of it all, attempting to keep my head above the waves. As always, struggling not to drown beneath it all. It was so long ago, that I had half forgotten that night as it was.
Tonight, I stood in that room; tonight, I stared out that window; and tonight, I realized my mother's life is like the moon.
Nothing has changed. I only made myself believe it so.
And this is only a short respite against the ever-coming and unchanging storm.
I stood before the window, the night turning the surface of the glass into a shining mirror, watching my mother's reflected face as I pointed out to her the moon being slowly eaten by a black malignancy. It's always cold in this room, cold and smelling of my alcoholic grandmother's house. I commented on that common smell once last week, to my mother. The smell of stale cigarettes, cheerfully acrid air freshener and despair. She blanched at my remark and turned away from me.
The sly cold seeps into the room from the windows, right through their smooth and bland faces to crawl across my skin. It's doing it now, as I stand here and talk to my mother of years long past. Of another eclipse that I witnessed during a snow storm, standing in front of my old bookstore. Hand in hand with Anastasia, peering between great gusts of snowy wind to witness the moon being gnawed alive. I didn't tell my mother how sadness filled my heart that night, how it had been there for so long and how it wouldn't leave for even longer to come. A love affair gone awry, a marriage gone bleakly sour and I in the middle of it all, attempting to keep my head above the waves. As always, struggling not to drown beneath it all. It was so long ago, that I had half forgotten that night as it was.
Tonight, I stood in that room; tonight, I stared out that window; and tonight, I realized my mother's life is like the moon.
Nothing has changed. I only made myself believe it so.
And this is only a short respite against the ever-coming and unchanging storm.