there's something off-putting about watching the woman who gave birth to you standing there helpless with tears dripping down her porcelain face out of her doe eyes. it's so off-putting that the sight of that turns my sympathetic neutrality towards this woman into irrational fear and a sort of trembling down my already withering spin. i don't quite know how to describe the feeling i get when i see her like this, but i see her, frame by frame. tears still falling and i'm still there, i suppose i'm waiting for someone to jump in and become that home that she so desperately needs, but no one does and she's still there. i remember when i was younger and still stuck on that ridiculous idea that monsters existed, i would be mortified to sleep alone and i would cry senselessly until she came in, picked me up and dragged me into her warm bed. i remember how she sang to me, slightly off key, the itsy bisty spider and i remember how her laughter felt like warmth on my skin. i tried to keep the warmth. i tried to save it for a rainy day. it was raining tonight, not from the sky but from my home. she was drenched with regret and anxieties that splattered on the floor like a broken glass of wine and i didn't know what to do, so i grabbed her soft hands and sang the itsy bisty spider with her until i felt her laughter hitting my cheek like it never left.