My mother is trying to die in the other room

ANNMARIE O’CONNELL

The other room is tiny. Brown furniture lines the walls so I can barely stand by her bedside. I can barely fit in the room my mother is trying to die in. I can’t afford the car

I am driving. My mother told me I shouldn’t drive because I wasn’t Godsaved and I was always sipping on something.

I can’t remember or hold on to anything my mother said always in circles

You have tragedy in your blood she told me

I am good at listening in circles.

I can tell you that my mother gave birth to me and that I was the moon like really something when I gushed out of her body without some way to escape my blood, tiny particles of botched DNA that rumble through me, beneath my neck, in the cuffs of my shoulders.

I am waiting to be worn in love that makes me fall to my knees before her, dismantled so quickly

I am the parts she made me.

I am waiting for something to arrive that never arrives.

I can’t even fit in the room my mother is trying to die in. My brutal blood pulsing through my veins, losing on purpose losing everything.