After the Trust at Sea

She always wanted to be a candle person but she was afraid of the thought of her home catching fire. Her daughter admired her taste but didn’t mind them with or without her bubble baths. She couldn’t live without her laced dresses, though. She remembered her mother braiding her hair on steps from a house full of the sounds of other people. She couldn’t find consistency and wouldn’t mess it up if she attained it. She couldn’t tell if her best was enough. She couldn’t find where to measure it.

Her cream walls were spotless. The carpets were always dusted. They weren’t infested with the flustering media and what other people thought. They were comfortably austere yet the mother feared dying. Everyday she hung her overcoat, she felt a panging knowledge that she was neglecting something. She prayed that it saved itself so their lives could be spared but the feeling never left her.

One evening, her daughter purchased a set of red tealight candles that smelled gadarene. Her mother tossed them immediately into the Sea of Galilee and prayed the whole night. Her daughter sympathized with her for whatever reason she figured. Its absence remained and daunted her; she couldn’t get it out. She didn’t know how to invite it back to bless her own region. It attacked her with fear of abandonment and neglect. She lived that whole week crying. Her mother was as tense. But, eventually, a glory entered. It centered itself on their pale gold tablecloth. Everything else remained dark. The stark chairs consumed them. The mother inquired about her daughter’s day. She felt the instinct she couldn’t convey yet woke up with, it seemed to relay, was gone. They exchanged words and swallowed in silence while a single luminaria candle flickered between them. The Holy Spirit lived with them ever since.

Our Eyes Avoiding the Sparrow

My mother gave me life with a shove of her breath. I was left from her womb. The stillborn took too long to embrace me, horns undeveloped so I waited. And as I cried, her pores wept with the pain of energy like my father that July night. It was hot, I knew. Nothing could’ve stopped them. But it was six years later when I grew into a beast when her legs strapped around his torso for better reasons, her fist heaping for the food he brought home slapped her dinner in the face. They didn’t listen to the silence of my sister whispering to God, begging that the shoving cop cuffing him wouldn’t hurt him. My father returned home where my grandmother gave him a heart fluttering with every meal she served him and every kiss goodnight. And I might’ve understood why he couldn’t give me one if I was emotionally there to be aware of the wind in their eyes. It choked me years later but I didn’t need it. It was to convince the devil he won.

And I’m sensitive as fuck so everyone told me I was strong so I could shut the hell up. It didn’t work but the supremacy birthed my self esteem while my sisters wallowed elsewhere, trying to find something I wasn’t aware of. I was inured by their hurting retort. Was it food to nurture their eighty pounds? I had it. Was it company to return to me alone? I became lonely. And we pained as a group. Sitting in the chairs my tuition accounted for, I long to be stopped and plead with and shoved with paining energy, pores weeping like I do everyday.