Plathological

mother, health, my worries

What she thought of her dog, she does not think of herself; the dog’s long dead and she airs on the side of rigamortis, sits with an arid lean-back, as if perpetually receiving quite the blow from the on-call nurse in a waiting room, vending machine around the corner, its hum out of reach. For not being a dog person, she had one. Now she takes supplements to give her what she’s not getting from the sun because she spends daylight working with knives on a counter top, some evenings heading home from a pillrun.
“100 pounds. That’s not healthy,” I say.
“I know,” she says, “I’m not healthy.”
I hold the phone as well as I can against my shoulder, turn my eyes towards the window, what’s left of the rain making its way to the scant puddles distorting the black tar of my courtyard. I’m waiting for her to tell me she has cancer. I’m waiting for her to tell me she has her quiet moments on the brink of affection when she can’t stop smoking, or sitting in front of the piles tenderized meat--or doing both while thinking of the abdomen, the animal fur that no doubt passes over it as she sleeps. Passes over, shedding and waiting to be fed. She drinks two oversized glasses of soy milk a day, just like I told her to but her bone density’s falling faster than the light of a heavy chandelier—electric, its frame centuries old and barely dangling above our heads. I can't be Socratic with her; that's her domain and I can't just throw it back in her face like that.