Pass the Mescaline
It is a cold road to my mother’s house.
I have driven it hundreds of times and each time it seems to get colder.
I have cranked up the heat, yet the cold is like a knife slicing through layers of stone
Until it finds a weak place and then it attacks with the furor of a wolverine
I have never been warm on that road even in the green apple days of spring
I guess that I always knew she was waiting and that waiting brought goose flesh to my soul.
She won’t be rude or cutting or even disrespectful; however, she will be aloof and inapproachable on any and every subject that might interest me. Her interest is of a short list that only an evil woman would cultivate.
A list about the woman that I have known or perhaps will know and when she means known she means it in a Biblical sense for Christ sake.
My indiscretions, affairs, and failures all bundled neatly into a package to be air mailed in a whim.
And yes mostly the failures make her bubble like the cheap champagne she buys for such occasions.
To know that I have not succeeded make her giddy with schoolgirl excitement, for I was always the enemy. I was the one child that could see through her guise of proclivity for the prudent and call a ***** a *****. I never said it out loud, but she knew that I knew. They say the first son is the closest but the second son learns things about both of them that they don’t think they are sharing. And If, just if he is smart enough he will find their weakness and teach them how to love him. Sometimes that love takes threats and hidden innuendos but hey nobody every said it was going to be easy, right?
I am that second child the one left behind. It wasn’t like the Marines; you know that whole no man left behind thing. It was more like good luck your on your own and to that principle I live my life today. No matter how many people I am surrounded by I always feel cold and alone. There are people that love me, but somehow they don’t seem to be the right people. I love them back as much as I can in my dysfunctional pathetic way but they always feel uncomfortable. I have a better chance of intimacy with a slug than a human being. No child left behind. Where the **** was George W. Bush when I needed him. Probably pulling that silver spoon out of his ass.
As I approach the house the temperature drops to a low that I have never felt before. I knock and then enter without waiting. I call out “Mother are you here?” I get no response. I know she has been ill so I walk down the hall to her bedroom. It seems like an ice cave. The closer I get to her door the colder it gets. I swear there is smoke coming from my mouth. When I finally reach the door I knock…. nothing. I turn the frozen knob slowly and push the door open. And there in the bed is my mother, dead, and dressed in her wedding gown. I am taken aback by the spectacle but then I realize that she must be bigger in death than life. She does not want anyone to forget what she was worth to the family.
I suddenly feel lonely and lost. I never knew this person. The one person that brought me into this world. I look at faded pictures from time gone by and wonder who was that person that raised me. That breast fed me and changed my diapers and made me the person I am today? How did we end up here? Devine intervention. The path less travelled? Suddenly I am for once without words. The granddaddy of all hurt as laid his axe between my shoulder blades. I go down and come back up gasping for air. My mother is dead.
And all I can think is “Praise the Lord and pass the Mescaline.” I am at last free.
Copyright © Stephen Kilmer | Year Posted 2013
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