Two Months AfterWhen I wake up, I realize this was the first dream I had where I knew my mother was dead. It was not a part of the dream, but I knew, the way you know things in dreams: that you can float if you squeeze your eyes shut enough, that this home that isn’t your home is your home, and, for this dream, that my mother was dead. I wonder if this is healthy, a form of acceptance, a good sign. When I woke after dreams where my mother was alive again, I didn’t know how to feel about it. But now, even in my dreams, my mother is dead. There is no sanctuary anymore. Even in my dreams, I couldn’t keep her alive. Four Months AfterI miss the way my mother loved me. How she saw me as having a place in the world. My therapist tells me when I speak about my mother, I use the world narrative a lot. It’s true. My mother was my life’s narrator. She told the story of my life to me. Without her, my life seems so clumsy and purposeless. Who cares what I do or don’t do? Who cares if I forget, or remember? This art I create in the vacuum of her death feels like so much pale dirt, weak and heavy and plain. My mother’s love was a bell that hurts to ring without her. My life is the static-y remainder of tape after the beautiful music ends. How empty and useless the silence, how I listen with my ear to the speaker because it’s all I have left. Six Months AfterMy therapist tells me it’s okay to just cry,
to miss her. Sometimes there is no answer, no pivoting, no framing things in a better light. She says it’s okay to just miss, to just long, to look at the world as less than without her, for now, or forever too. But definitely for now, it’s okay to be buried in it for a bit, to be in it, to feel it. My mind whirls and buzzes, trying to find its solution. The insects in the forest behind my house scream every night trying to find love in the dark. I sit with my dogs on the porch when I can’t sleep and listen. Together we all watch the sun creep across the sky like spilled wine. A new day waiting to flood over us, no matter how comfortable we’ve grown with the night.
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Cristin O’Keefe AptowiczCristin O’Keefe Aptowicz is the author of six previous books of poetry. Her second collection of poetry, Hot Teen Slut, was recently option for a film adaption, and her sixth collection of poetry, The Year of No Mistakes, was awarded the Book of the Year for Poetry by the Writers’ League of Texas. Aptowicz is also the author of two nonfiction books, most recently Dr Mütter’s Marvels: A True Tale of Intrigue and Innovation at the Dawn of Modern Medicine (Avery Books/Penguin ), which spent three months on the New York Times Best Seller list. Recent awards include a NEA Fellowship in Literature, the ArtsEDGE Writer-in-Residence at the University of Pennsylvania, and the Amy Clampitt House Residency. When not on tour, Aptowicz lives and writes in Austin, TX, with her husband, the novelist/screenwriter Ernest Cline, and their family. For more information, please visit: www.aptowicz.com |