My mother twisted irregular ringlettes around her finger in the dead of the night. She pulled my head knee-level and spoke in whispers of places she would one day see. Some people are never meant to stay.
I grew up in the quiet, still nights of "don't get up or else." Else was a definition I never bothered to learn.
I would crawl hands and knees and open my ears as wide as they would go. You hear so many secrets when invisible.
I became an artist at the age of three, vivid image colored bifocals taped to the back inside of my eyelids. My mother wrote HOPE entwined with NO, four inch blade, small waves, when I would sleep so I could only dream of where she would one day go and where I would never see.
Inheritance breaks backs with unforeseen trauma. Seeing the crooked cat-walk back unfamiliar to the bitter taste of prophecy, daughters learn to expect good-byes.
My mother spoke of places I couldn't fathom. My mother bare-backed with the wind before I had a chance to learn some mothers want to stay and rock their curly-haired crying daughter to sleep.
It is self-preservation to believe people cannot be permanent. A mother's love is supposed to be the strongest love of all, a piece of you able to be seen without the truth-bearing soul of a mirror. And mine was the size of the wind. You sleep and cry, and I will find a way to leave before being left.