Creekside

I would watch my mother lay out in the sun and take her licks

in the late August afternoon, as the tide went out gradually—

then suddenly all at once.

Face-down and taciturn, emitting an aura with the potency

of the low tide before her. Undisturbed and burnt down

like the cigarette that delicately hung between

her L’Oreal Burnt Amethyst lips, discontinued.

Just her, the creek, and a sand-coated glass of something she liked to call,

don’t judge me,

splayed out before the muck full of forgotten childhood playthings,

uncovered and unwanted.

Whether prayer, confessional, or self-flagellation,

she required total solitude—

beachside, cheeks up to God, the realest she ever was.

I’d watch from afar, this endangered enraged woman,

zoomed out of reality and pumped full

of loathing.

I’m sorry I let you down your entire life—the last coherent utterance

she left me with, before the bruises that ran up

and down her arms dragged her back to the creek, as she clawed

the air with incoherent desperation.

Before she left me

for the muck to find the glasses she lost several summers before.

The faint jingle jangle of her bracelets

on bony wrists—

the sounds that I hallucinated for several summers after.