More and more I gain my mother's mouth. It's transmuted from a thin grey lip I inherit from my father, like the line of horizon along the ocean when it is lidded over with clouds, to a full blossom, the pluck of flower, a pulpy, red fruit. A full lip, an impassioned lip, a lip to suckle life from everything it kisses. The lip a hummingbird would have, lustring out the nectar, the juice of every plant, until all browns and crumbles.

It is my mother who cries in the night, my mother who is aflamed, screaming like she would at the moon. Screaming like she does in the day. A screaming banshee. At night, she reclines in her wilderness. At night, she is queen, screaming through the thick double doors of my parents' bedroom. Screaming for more, while my father pleases her. He is her silent, her invisible, Eros. He is her supplicant, her eunuch.

When my mother leaves, my father scavenges for remains throughout their bedroom: her dresses, her forsaken, crumpled clothes. He doesn't fathom that he is dry and brown and faded.

© 1990 - 2003 Katharina Woodworth