So Clean by Len Kuntz
Even with the meds, she still had to tell herself not to be sad. Each day, she said, each day the dark thoughts smoldered sooty even as she smiled demure and rubbed his earlobe between her fingers, careful not to scratch him with one of the splintered, teeth bitten nails. Soaking all that time in the bath she drowned herself countless times yet always stepped out robed and very clean.
Here in this photo she is a girl so tiny and frail on the piano bench, her head caught cocked in motion, her fingers a blur trilling. Six years old, maybe seven. She appears determined and focused. I get a magnifying glass and split her lips as wide as the lens will make them and still I can’t tell if that is a true smile.
In the picture that hangs over the mantle she is lying down, flat hands meeting as if in prayer aside her cheek. This is the one that started her career as a model and took her away from music and us, even though we, her children were not yet born.
I tape the last box with the roller. My siblings, honking from the curb outside, have had it with me. Even though I look not a thing like her, they worry I’ve caught what mother had, that I might be just this much cracked and broken.
I pull out the dresser drawers. A stray marble rolls diagonally from one corner to another. I dump the wooded drawers on the bed upside down. I shake them, thinking there has to be something left behind: a clue, a hieroglyphic, but all there is that marble and a dull dust cloud thick enough to make me cough.
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image by secretxheart.
