Micro by Beth Sherman

Angel

Mother in her coffin, still as a broken doll, her mouth a slash of plum lipstick she never owned.

Can’t walk talk blink eat breathe.

How could she forget how to breathe? I ask them.

In The Place, Mother in a wheelchair. Stationed in the garden or next to her bed. Sometimes they put her in the hall and forget about her.

The Place has big windows. All the nurses wear white uniforms, funny white hats and shoes that never squeak.

There’s one nurse – with seams on her stockings – who whispers maybe she doesn’t recall what she says to you but she knows she loves you.  

Everyone’s batty here, Mother tells me. Don’t eat the bananas. They’re poisoned. 

Mother screaming at the nurse, stop trying to kill me. You won’t get away with it.

Mother, who never raises her voice because it’s not swan lady.   

Where’s Aunt Sue, she asks, when we went to Sue’s funeral, shoveled dirt into her grave.

Mother in the wheelchair with her chin chest-drooped.

Are you sleeping, Mother? No. Her hand reaching for mine, not letting go. 

Mother at her wedding in a white lace dress with a train. Why do they call it that when there aren’t any tracks? My father circling her orbit like a planet glued to the sun.

Mother in the Yellow House, making Apple Brown Betty, letting me help. Cinnamon brown sugar butter lemon something sticky.

Mother as a girl. Pigtails. Pogo stick. A blouse that her own mother embroidered. Mother’s name on the collar. I have the picture somewhere.

Sylvia, you’re my angel, she used to say. My good girl. My star.

What was written there?

Sylvia? 

That’s not right.

It begins with a G. 

I love you, angel and then she’d fold me inside her wings.