portrait of mother as gone
BY MEGHANN PLUNKETT
Will her ghost crave what she craves? My liquor bottles rattling
like wind chimes. The medicine cabinet unlatching
all by itself. My hauntings are manageable shapes,
in the form of small white pills. Each one placed on the tongue
is a communion and she is still here. Eyes thrown to the back of
the head like dice into an alley. Her name
fingered in cursive on the bathroom mirror. I am
taking bets, confessing her memory into the hum of a dial tone,
collecting dues paid with grief. I am
lost without the lullaby of her constant want: an addict
to point me north. This is a part of it too. I understand
the process of coaxing a life away from itself. The careful surgery
of removing a sallow mind. What does the stinging of
morning feel like without the slow tragedy of looking
asking to bring the night back? What now? Give me days, just
days and days of nothing but static. Give me empty promises like
flowers rotting in a vase on my vanity until they smell like her–
a body that’s given up on being a body. Give me something I know.