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Overhead(2007)
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Two mothers.
1 Overhead? 2 The thatching. 1 It hooks the twigs to planks. 2 For festering is bred within the damp 1 Moldy lungs. 2 And, shallowing with fumes of vinegar. 1 I wait for these long due repairs which will replace the thatch that once was there before the fields became fires. 2 Round walls and flat floors of stone were not destroyed just blackened. Days on hands and knees; soap and scrubbing, giving way to the same grey surface—save for the branded marking of the burning hand. 1 It’s true, my son—whose skin would ripple in the wind and brighten any room, his eyes the whitest blue, and curls to top his head (for where else could they curl but in the air which they outdid in lightness?)—he never lived his life with mine but rather took to running wild as the flowers he used to gather on all fours and shove into his mouth, cracking pebbles and small spines of prey between his teeth. 2 Sometimes he slipped completely into light, that hair that could become a gold-hued mirror showed the roots he ripped out with his nails. I can attest to his beginnings as a human child, but not from where his looks derived—my hair in smoky curls since I was a little girl, his father who was born bald remained that way the forty years that he had life. 1 Overhead? 2 The thatch? 1 The thatch that burned and leaked its flames into the fields was not ignited by a match. In winter’s grasp, even through the deepest snow, my son—he ran just like a wolf on all four paws—had not been home since last it had been light. 2 When finally he did come crashing through the door, all covered up in muck and wormy strands of uneathed root, I froze: staring at his naked form—a gleaming, muddy tooth—I was submerged beneath a wave of rage, at his unhuman face I lunged and took him by the nape to teach the lessons that such a son deserves. His eyes spat out at me: MOTHER was the only word that had not yet been changed by the rapid stirrings of his lycanthropic blood. He spat and bit at my hand, so that I grabbed his and forced it deep into the belly of the glowing stove. 1 And now, if asked, I’d swear his eyes flashed red, burning double pupils in his head, thrown back and mouth agape—he let out the total sound not heard since five years ago that day, they hung a thousand wolves up by the heels in barbed wire traps to die—those men who love their land for what it can produce. 1 + 2 My plumes were churning out the pipes and straight into the blackened stars, his legs were buckling, then they raised him up to that surprising height of the upright canine. He wavered—his eyes were fixing me and now, just there, I saw his hand that I had burned in flames, still crackling like the dryest wood and bark. When his imbalance broke he fell down to the floor, and I raised up the cleaving blade I’d snatched up out of fear and rage and sliced the burning hand from his arm. He howelled in a cloven tongue and fled the house to stagger through the fields only to disappear into the endless caves that populate the hills.
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