Tasha Walston
LIGHT LEAK
It is Halloween and my costume is the grief I drag out of a remote, midnight bog and wear like baby's skin. There is an accident on the road and I am talking on the phone but the connection is bad. When we finally arrive to pick up my mother, there is nothing inside of me but punchlines and acid. I do not speak to her at first. I cannot decide anything, do anything, say anything.
//
We are so far from my home, but close to yours. We go to the print shop in Tukwila to make zines. We are already out of time to make it to the show. Go, you say, stapling. The strobing light of the copy machine arrests your features in stop-motion lightning. My heart folds in half, a dying animal, as I drive to Easy Street
alone.
No, not alone.
My mother is also here, but she stays in the car. You text me between proofs but I don’t see because I am looking the members of Dark Chisme in the face. Do they notice my eyes are countless rows of hungry skulls? Do they smell the umbilicus—the apologetic afterbirth of my pain—connecting me to my mother? How can they not: It is a tripping hazard, its shame steaming on the cold, grime-laced West Seattle sidewalk.
//
I pick you up from the FedEx where you wait outside in the dark, having outlasted the employees. I do not speak to you because my mouth has only bombs and I cannot breathe. When you speak, a thousand angry horses charge foaming from my chest. I am not in control. I clap twice, as if to startle a biting dog.
//
In the driveway I wrap my mother in the car blanket she sewed from Seahawks fleece for me the year I cared about American football because Seattle won the Super Bowl. I do not want you to help me. I carry her up the cunning stairs and into my house. It is the first time she's been there in… years? I place her gently on the dining room table and spread myself over her like Isis, press my face against the cool, crinkling bags of composted human remains and the wooden tokens with her name.
Your palm rests on my thigh. We stay like that until December.
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