*Non-Fiction — July 21, 2022
The Key I Coughed Up
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There was a time I thought I’d die for a man or a time I wanted to want to die for a man or, perhaps, a time I just wanted to die. My mother lived in the same house for thirty years.
She raised my sisters and me there, trilogy of daughters. Porch swing, banister, pitcher of iced tea. A plot of coneflowers. Dogs sleeping in the backyard sun.
My mother sold that house today. Where do I go now? she asks the walls she papered. I call her from an airport on Mother’s Day. I start crying when I tell her I’m afraid to leave the relationship I’m in, afraid to stay. I only ever wanted my name inside the gentlest mouth. She tells me not to make a decision based on fear. She tells me I have so much ahead of me. She says, Maybe you’ll date women again. This makes me laugh, so I’m laughing and crying by the bubble tea place in SeaTac. Daylight bouncing off the wings of parked planes.
I meet up with the mother of a man I dated nearly a decade ago. We lived in a cabin with a wood stove, he and I. I loved the maul, the seasoned cords, the stove hunger and hum. He was the second of her three sons, two of which now have their own children. I ask her how her sons and husband are doing. I’m tired, she says. Tired of being a receptacle for their frustrations. She tells me her husband is a better grandfather than he was a father. He’s realizing all the ways he could have helped me more. We’re sitting outside. My tea has gone cold. I was once almost a part of this family.
In a dream, I cough up a key to the backdoor of the house where I grew up. When I go inside, the walls have all moved just slightly. A woman is raising three boys. She looks nothing like me or anyone I know.
My mother’s father was neither a good father nor a good grandfather. I used to write about him as a parrot with teeth. Now, this houseful of imagined parrots. I’ve taken all their teeth. The children in me are dull. I worked hard to get them to the nothing that they are. The man I thought I’d die for doesn’t matter now—what fascinates me is the girl I was, outsourcing her purpose.
My dogs sleep in the backyard sun. I pull a hot ember from the wood stove with iron prongs. I put my mouth around the ember.
It doesn’t end the way you think.
She raised my sisters and me there, trilogy of daughters. Porch swing, banister, pitcher of iced tea. A plot of coneflowers. Dogs sleeping in the backyard sun.
My mother sold that house today. Where do I go now? she asks the walls she papered. I call her from an airport on Mother’s Day. I start crying when I tell her I’m afraid to leave the relationship I’m in, afraid to stay. I only ever wanted my name inside the gentlest mouth. She tells me not to make a decision based on fear. She tells me I have so much ahead of me. She says, Maybe you’ll date women again. This makes me laugh, so I’m laughing and crying by the bubble tea place in SeaTac. Daylight bouncing off the wings of parked planes.
I meet up with the mother of a man I dated nearly a decade ago. We lived in a cabin with a wood stove, he and I. I loved the maul, the seasoned cords, the stove hunger and hum. He was the second of her three sons, two of which now have their own children. I ask her how her sons and husband are doing. I’m tired, she says. Tired of being a receptacle for their frustrations. She tells me her husband is a better grandfather than he was a father. He’s realizing all the ways he could have helped me more. We’re sitting outside. My tea has gone cold. I was once almost a part of this family.
In a dream, I cough up a key to the backdoor of the house where I grew up. When I go inside, the walls have all moved just slightly. A woman is raising three boys. She looks nothing like me or anyone I know.
My mother’s father was neither a good father nor a good grandfather. I used to write about him as a parrot with teeth. Now, this houseful of imagined parrots. I’ve taken all their teeth. The children in me are dull. I worked hard to get them to the nothing that they are. The man I thought I’d die for doesn’t matter now—what fascinates me is the girl I was, outsourcing her purpose.
My dogs sleep in the backyard sun. I pull a hot ember from the wood stove with iron prongs. I put my mouth around the ember.
It doesn’t end the way you think.
Originally published in No Tokens Issue No. 10. View full issue & more.