Glossary of Terms
       

When I am 26, my mother will die. It will be
a mystical death. By this I mean that when it happens,
it will already have begun a hundred times.

My mother's death will begin with a fistful of
rope. My mother's death will begin with a handful
of pills. A hundred symbolic backpacks dotting the center

of campus. My mother's death will begin with an insect
so small it could bury you undetected. It will begin
with tall grass in the mountains, a pair of boots

crusted with mud. With computer scans and blooms
of gray matter. Vials and vials of unyielding blood.
My mother's death will begin with a leaving,

the only girl-child on a train with her feet up.
A house that echoes and two bodies that tick like
rattles. My mother's death will begin in a sterile office,

the doctor's hands looming. She will be fifteen
and pregnant. The doctor is a friend,
her stepmother will say. No one will believe her.

My mother's death will begin with her first assault.
This time she will be five, her own mother's body
dissolved into flames. Years later, she will chase her half-

brother from the kitchen, gun in hand. He will still
be invited to the little house on Christmas, the house
her father built with his hands, the lawn

furiously glinting. When you see the motorcyclists
splitting lanes outside Los Angeles, gunning
their engines, tell them this. Tell them

I can't sleep in the passenger's seat. Tell them
I didn't mean it when I screamed, that I startle
too soon, too loudly, and with too much violence.

Tell them there is a thing that sits with me that I
never name, plain words swimming on my regretful
tongue. Today I think I will call it what it is.

Tweet
Copyright © 2020 Suzanne Manizza Roszak All rights reserved
from New Letters
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission