My Mom and Her Home

These old stones have undressed their plaster-clothes. Her roof is tattered, yet she declines my call. Fashion and novelty never tempt her. Her soles sometimes soil her floor, but she doesn’t fear a stretched-out index finger. She refuses a share of yummy Chinese noodles or Arabian barbecue chicken from my kitchen beyond the fence. She takes steamed rice and cheap sardine curry as five-star food to her home. No one teases her, the ill-mannered slurps. She hears his footsteps from the corridor of hallucination. Nobody chimes in, her secret whisperings. She likes the fright, the wilderness of dark lonely nights. Nude red stones in her wall remain as remnants of old love. She’ll never come to stay in our new home, she likes to be on her own always. First published in Silver Blade, Canada