"While the subject of Meghan's work may mostly appear to be love, I would argue that her true love affair is with Texture: the ways of look, feel, taste, tremor. With a broad and silver butter knife she slaps texture onto the thighs of the poem, between the teeth, behind the ears until the wprds pop and strut."
Lucy Anderton, Artist in Residence, Moulin a Nef, Auvillar, France .
"Taste the flavor of each verse, the after effect of the select verbage, and the delicious aroma of a life placed on page... Meghan Jones is able to take us with her--in the familiar terms and images--that most seem to have overlooked, or simply forgotten. Images given in a way that makes us wish we had paid just a little more attention when they flashed in front of our own eyes just as we blinked."
Dan Seaman, Assistant Executive Director, NORAZ poets, Prescott, AZ.
"I can't think of one of the younger poets we've published more exciting than Meghan Jones. She has a powerful and lucid ability with metaphor. She writes with a feminist lilt reminiscent of Tori Amos in its universality. She represents a growing number of young poets with feet planted firm both in academic and spoken word worlds, and it's our suspicion at Destructible Heart Press that she will emerge in the next 10 years as one of the leading poets that ties us together."
Adam Rubinstein Publisher, Destructible Heart Press, Albuquerque New Mexico.
Please email Meghan at Jones@MeghanWithAnH.net or use the form below.
Because my mother breast-fed me. Because she wanted me to be safe. Because she loved me. Because a lot of people have loved me. Because I like being the center of attention. Because it turns me on. Because my first kiss was a pretty Christian girl who insisted we had a “Victorian” friendship. Because I tried many religions before settling on none. Because I refuse to settle. Because of Japanese rope and the movie Secretary. Because once I knew what I wanted I couldn’t stop saying it. Because my dad said “fuck” a lot. Because summer time makes me want to get naked. Because I find cracking a book’s spine erotic. Because I love being wet. Because it makes me feel vulnerable. Because vulnerability is power. Because of the Ninja Turtles and my cousin always making me play April. Because “April is the cruelest month”. Because of poetry and microphones. Because of Madonna’s Sex book. Because my line between art and sex has always been blurred. Because of Tim Curry. Because of Eddie Izzard. Because trying to recover from an eating disorder is like trying to be reborn: bloody, painful, screaming, messy, beautiful, eye-opening, wreck. Because now I can do anything. Because I could always do anything and I had to relearn that. Because I’m still a little broken. Because of John. Because of Bethany. Because I won’t omit either. Because taboo only means “I don’t want to understand you”. Because my body is a temple and god knows I still need to pray.
1
Louie Armstrong roughly sings
the background to lace up this night.
A star-strung corset of low voice conversation.
Lipstick smeared wine glass, near-empty plates,
softening candle mess, the glass table between us.
You mimic Armstrong’s sandpaper voice
so I’ll laugh.
I hate my laugh.
You love my laugh.
But I can appreciate the ways you
divine them from me.
2
My wine dulled better sense
catches a glimpse of the sentence hovering
and clamps it with pressed lips.
Caging the words in the trap of my mouth.
Grapes have a way of making me more honest
than I want to be.
3
I never mean to turn our love making
into poetry.
Please accept my apology.
It’s not my doing.
Blame it on a stunted adolescence.
You use to claim my muses,
my musings only made me more beautiful.
Back when you thought words
may carry time bombs for our relationship.
Do you feel the same
now that I pick over the leftovers of dinner
desperate for an angle?
4
If I ever leave you,
I will no longer be able to eat mango sorbet.
This will not be deliberate.
I will not know why
it no longer holds appeal to me.
I will not actively remember you
spooning it into my throat
on August evenings too hot to allow us
anything else to do.
Nor the mango-flavored tongue you offered me
between bites.
5
I have seen the journal you keep
burned with the secrets I never told you.
I am waiting for an explanation.
Honey is a very good color on you.
Sweetheart is a sentiment for small children
and salmon only looks attractive on fish.
I’ll steal the eyelashes from your cheeks and
use them to sweeten my coffee.
Smelling the sugar that stains my breath
after an evening with you.
Looking like a jazz band mosh pit in the morning and
dragging as the stars rise in the sighs of brick etched in your eyes.
But the bareness of honey sticking hip to stomach
is a very good color on you.
Music from the computer at an hour of the night
when even the mountain winds are asleep
remind me of the drum circles I use to dance in.
I was magnificent in red hair.
The insistent pounding
stopped my wrist glancing
and slowed creeping feet
as I slip windows open.
Now lives in the taste of memories in my mouth.
More bitter than your sweat-salty tongue.
Are your hands jealous
of my blue cards?
Do they wonder where my skin has been
as they glaze over it, painting me with golden rouge?
The drums that beat the lust into me
have been replaced.
Time does that.
I now smolder with swollen lips, breast.
Hot driven sensitivity to touch
in the berkesk beats of smoky night clubs and salsa dancing.
You walk like burning.
Charring dead oak tree leaves
with every fatal step.
Caramelize me.
Heat the single-lamp lit bed with our love making
to the point of transforming us both.
Into places where we remember to forget the voices of past lovers,
even if our bodies still miss their touch
and our tongues can recall the shape of their names.
Knocking fragile ankles on desk legs
in the gray air of not-quite morning.
Ripe flesh tearing, stifling myself with fingers.
The practice familiar
as walls are rewashed fabric-thin.
The milky form in bed telling me
I was talking in my sleep.
A subconscious questionnaire.
Send me a response in a note
scrawled on wet cocktail napkins that will crumble when I read them.
Perhaps wrapping it about a chickens leg
would be more effective.
I tend to break important things.
Crawl under the sheets damp with sex and humidity,
cooling on my hips.
Glancing out the blinds for a carefully stolen memory.
It’s true I slept in the bed of the moon before
you and I were lovers.
It’s lined with pine needles, Bermuda grass,
and bits of silver so reflections don’t feel forgotten.
I could have stayed there forever
as the moon’s fiery pet.
Balanced in a nest on the edge of here and out there—
but I’m afraid of heights.
The last night, moon gifted me
a strand of amber beads that I now keep
in the hallows of my spine.
She tied them around my throat and told me,
“Honey is a very good color on you.”
This sharp language is strange in my mouth.
Confusing my glands
as I try to swallow the words
that sit uncertainly behind my teeth.
These cobbled streets keep my company
as my heels make them speak
in the click-clack dialect of strides.
Wind pushing at the backs of my calves
with anxious child hands.
I will make this my city.
With its bread-scented air
and clouds that swallow villages.
Buildings crowd the curbs like newspaper.
Pigeons play Tetris with crumbs
while a lined woman
sits holding the joystick.
I gather packages of heat—
thumb through tree shadows—
as I walk this taste of Bahn.
The sun is weak and teasing
in the sweater of October.
A shy lover
who laughs at my advances
and hides her brilliance behind
a handkerchief of roof tiles.
I absorb the street’s secrets
through fences—
able to drop them from my wet tongue
into the wanting ears of other places.
I am not faithful.
I have others who let me
drip cold
sweat
on their roads just as you do,
Bahn.
Seattle—with her slow drag
on cigarettes and smog.
Hiding zipper tabs in cracked sculptures
under grit, dirt, and rain.
Flagstaff—inhaling a breath
so sharp it pales the leaves
as he sexes an early winter
out of fall.
Austin—sliding her moist back
into my stomach at the end
of another marathon day.
Mojave’s highways cut scars into desert.
A c-section smile she doesn’t want to talk about.
Plains stretch over her skin—
straining with the deep curves of mountains.
Fragile shoulders freckled with shrubs.
Baby must have come out blue.
I could be buried here.
How appropriate—
feeding our dead to the ground
while we track dust like Alzheimer's.
All of the collected information about Walter Bisbee and the strange happenings surrounding this extraordinary man point to a single fact—the disastrous events of Walter’s early life can unanimously be tied to his involvement with the organization known, to the very few people who know of it, as the Sacred Temple of Jewels for the Unification of Democratic Empires or simply as ST. JUDE
ST. JUDE was one of the most elite and secret organizations inside the United States government. Thanks to the lives and sanity of many good people, we finally have a loose grasp on this group’s function. The following report, I found wedged in the side of locker number 7 at an Amtrak station after a hot dog vendor included the locker key in the toppings of my Chicago-style Bratwurst.
CLASSIFIED: EYES ONLY
Report#: 2156789 Reporter Name: WITH-HELDMy dear friend, I know you will get this where it needs to go. My presence here has become a bit of a problem. I know you understand. ~L.B.
In response to the Red Scare of the 1950’s, the US government began their first anti-terrorist measures. Convinced of an impending attack from the US’s Communist adversaries and Russia in particular, the President’s cabinet suggested the US form an organization to, initially, safe guard the country’s investment. The US’s war machine had already begun with factories churning out grenade launchers, bullet proof vests, and other means of “protection” against this foe. If the Communist countries were suddenly struck with a desire for diplomacy, that wouldn’t do for the un-used goods or the American jobs that would be lost without the threat of the Red Devil.
ST. JUDE was formed to do two things—maintain the good relationships the US had already established with allied countries and sabotage any peace talks with adversaries when it wasn’t in the best interest of the US economy to reconcile. Our friend Walter (code name: Agent Opal) along with three other agents referred to only as Agent Amber, Agent Onyx, and Agent Sapphire formed the core of the organization from 1965 to approximately 1990 when Agent Onyx was captured overseas followed swiftly by the jet-ski decapitation death of Agent Sapphire and Walter’s increasingly jeopardized perception of reality. There is little known about the current Agents active in the organization aside from their code names: Diamond, Ruby, and Pearl. With the consent of a frightened Congress, ST. JUDE was given any and all resources they deemed necessary for their operations. How the organization got so little oversight by those who created it is not entirely known. Many of my sources suggest the administration was not eager to be associated with such an organization, fearing the backlash of the American people if they learned the US had bombed their own embassy not just once, but consistently throughout history—among far worse trespasses on American’s trust. Whatever the reason, the initially prescribed twice a year inspection of personnel, facilities, and completed operations dropped to once a year and then to the occasional casual inspection every few years and then to virtually no oversight at all. Fifteen years ago is this reporter’s conservative estimate of the last known government inspection of this organization.
END OF REPORT
In June of 1975, Walter infiltrated one of Russia’s Federal surveillance teams and, although the information outlining the team’s surveillance subjects was not nearly as valuable as Walter has hoped, Aleksandr Kazakov, the then-current prime minister of Russia, took the infiltration as a grave act of disrespect and hoped to remind ST. JUDE of their country’s place. I am certain Kazakov personally sent an assassin named Igor Petrov to deliver a bullet to Walter.
After Igor flew to the US, rented a vicious Porsche, drove to the Bisbee’s neighborhood, scaled the community fence, picked the lock on the Bisbee’s back door, and disabled the Bisbee’s rather useless guard dog, he found Jeannine sleeping on the couch and Walter missing. At the time, Walter was on a reconnaissance mission in Rome—however; Igor had no way to know this. After gliding soundlessly through the rooms of the small house, Igor surmised incorrectly—due to the missing suite case and absence of any male toiletries—that Walter ran in expectation of Kazakov’s displeasure. In frustration, Igor cocked his gun and pointed it at the sleeping forehead of Jeannie. He hesitated only a moment before squeezing the trigger. Igor reasoned he would get into less trouble if he returned having at least shot Bisbee’s wife and delivered a message, if not killed Walter. Igor didn’t count on the mess.
Walter arrived home a few days later to the body of his wife and a ruined sofa.
Six months after Jeannine’s death, Walter reentered the service of ST. JUDE, although, according to my gardener’s sister Cindy who was working as a temp in the building next door at the time, his work was then marked with desk duty and few active missions. Cindy noted his appearance at the office building nearly every day during her time next door. Jeannine and Walter had no children and, despite extensive research by genealogy specialists, I can find no record of any living relatives of Walter’s after his mother’s death in November of 1981. We can only imagine what substances helped Walter chop carrots or wash his pants after Jeannine’s passing. What loneliness must have crushed his ribs, shortened his breath, the nights he half-woke from a dream and automatically reached for his sleeping wife. His hand would fall through air where she was supposed to be and in that second, ripped from sleep, his life would come wailing back. What we do know is that Walter never remarried and, until moving to Blue Waters, he lived a life of solitude.
On the morning of January 23rd, as Walter sat on what he thought was a warm Tuscan villa’s veranda it was actually a hard plastic chair and matching table the color of gruel in the dining room of Blue Waters. He skimmed through what he thought was the New York Times for the latest headlines, although he was actually reading the classified section of the 3rd largest circulated newspaper of the Arizona-Valley area, when he came across the 4 inches of text that changed the course of the rest of his life.
ST. JUDE
Oh holy ST. JUDE, Apostle and Martyr,
great in Virtue and rich in Mira-
cles, near kinsman of Jesus
Christ, faithful intercessor of all
who invoke you special patronage
in time of need to you I have
recourse from the depth of my
heart and humbly beg to whom God
has given such great power to
come to my assistance. Help me in my
present urgent petition. In return
I promise to make your name known
and cause you to be invoked.
Say three Our Fathers, three Hail Marys
and Glorias Publication must be
promised. ST. JUDE, pray for us all
who invoke your aid.
Amen.
As the oatmeal dripped in large globs out Walter’s mouth, his addled brain began to whirl and misfire with the Alzheimer’s cells whacking against one another. “My service is needed once again,” he mumbled through the cold cereal, his voice wracked with phlegm from lack of use. His selective memory began flipping through the past like photographs—Walter standing with other men all in distinct uniforms that were not-quite military. Walter sitting in a classroom with five others, together, staring at the blackboard, which read Methods of Communication. Walter being approached by a bum who advised him to “pray to ST. JUDE for answers to your problem.” Walter following the same man into a dive bar that smelled of piss and twelve hour days and coal and sweat and desperation all perfumed with watered-down whiskey—exchanging manila envelopes between them bursting with information to build or burn a city…
Walter took the handles of Michael’s wheelchair and began pushing him slowly towards the activities board, which was located near the hallway that lead to the entrance area of the Home. Stealth is a funny thing. It can fool a Sultan’s top bodyguards into thinking I am still plotting in the next city when in fact I am in the Sultan’s bedroom, stealing his diary hopping it will have a confession of the Sultan’s dishonest labor practices. Walter and Michael did not have stealth. They had negligence. With a higher than recommended nurse to resident ratio, it was not unusual for residents to have hours at a time to themselves without interruption by a Home official.
As Walter leaned up to feign examining the activities board, he gave Michael’s wheelchair a nudge with his foot. Michael rolled a few feet into the hallway and out of sight of the nurse’s station. “Oh, Michael. You have gotten away from me,” Walter said projecting his voice for the room to hear. He walked nonchalantly after Michael’s wheelchair and, once in the hallway, quickly pushed him towards the entrance. A small visitor’s desk welcomed people into Blue Waters, but to Walter and Michael’s ease, the young girl who managed this desk was in the small employee kitchen getting a snack. With no hesitation, Walter strode out the double doors of Blue Waters pushing Michael ahead of him.
Walter turned Michael’s wheelchair right as he exited the Home not because he knew where he was going but because he didn’t want anyone else knowing he didn’t. After walking a block of Mesa streets, Walter turned randomly down a street called Normal.
A right on Jackson, a left on Birch.
Straight through 42nd st., a right onto Central.
Walter had no reason to stop at Our Holy Mother Church. It’s old and boring and lovely the way all churches are—including several others the pair had already passed. Our Holy Mother Church’s thick oak doors, brass hinges, and large knocker with a decorative stone in the center gives one the impression of entering God’s house. As if upon opening the doors you’d find God’s armchair, God’s coat rack and be offered a comfortable seat and something cool to drink while God asked you how your niece’s piano recital went.
Walter stood in front of the church slack jawed. His hands gripped around the rubber-encased handles of Michael’s wheelchair. He rocked the chair back and forth over the two feet of pavement in front of the church—the rubber of the wheels, meant to cushion the ride on threadbare carpet, now made a noise like bare skin smacking into concrete. The sound of small rocks sinking into the fleshy material of rubber.
“Don’t you see?” Walter asked Michael who, stricken with locked-in syndrome—a condition under which a person cannot move or speak, could not respond. Walter pointed to the ornate door-knocker centered on the heavy-looking door. At the center of the intricate bronze work on the handle was a giant milky stone. An opal. Walter turned to Michael and stared at him a moment.
“Yes, I realize it could just be a coincidence. Do you think I’m an idiot, Michael?” Walter paused staring at Michael. “Well, thank you for apologizing. I know we’re both on edge after this morning.” Michael blinked twice. His version of “no”. One blink, naturally, meaning “yes”. Walter withdrew a folded newspaper clipping from the pocket of his red bathrobe he wore over pajama pants decorated with polar bears and a t-shirt proclaiming “hang loose”. Walter held the paper for Michael to see. “Have you forgotten it’s supposed to look like a coincidence?” He pointed with a flourish to the few inches of text imploring the help of St. Jude that he had found in the paper that morning. Walter leaned down towards Michael’s ear and hissed, “They don’t want everybody knowing about,” he paused and looked both ways up and down the heat shimmering streets of Mesa, Arizona, “you-know-what.” Walter finished, dropping his voice to a whisper. He stood up and clapped his hands together in an end-of-discussion kind of way. “The real question now, my friend, is how much do you know about confession?”
***
At the exact same moment, in an unassuming office building on the edge of a small town in North Carolina—the deadliest man in America was yelling at one of his office assistants. “I’m sorry, Ruby. Maybe you didn’t understand me.” The young man standing opposite the large desk shifted uncomfortably and tried to wipe the moisture from the back of his neck discreetly.
“Um, Agent Ruby? Sir?” The young man asked, stressing the word Agent and sweating through his words.
“You’ll be Agent when you complete a mission without utterly ballsing it up. I have one thing to say to you, Ruby—Lebanon. Live down Lebanon and maybe we can talk. Now, quit fidgeting.” The young man froze in place, a finger still slipped between his skin and collar. “I said earlier ‘maybe you didn’t understand me’. When I asked you for coffee twenty minutes ago, no,” the man behind the desk glanced at his wrist watch, “twenty-five minutes ago I failed to mention that when you returned with said coffee, it should be a pleasing warm temperature—not ice fucking cold.” The man swept the Styrofoam cup of black liquid off the smooth wooden surface and into the trashcan next to the desk, sloshing a bit onto the blue-gray carpet. Simon Brooker closed his eyes and ran his large fingers across his eyelids. He pinched the bridge of his nose and sighed the way a man who has not slept properly in years might sigh. “Get out of here Ruby. I’ll send for you when I have a less demanding task than coffee acquisition.” The young man lunged for the door, yanked it open, and walked, shaking, into the main area full of mostly unmanned cubicles. As the door closed, Simon shook his head. “’The best, of the best, of the best…,’” he recited the beginning of St. Jude’s recruitment slogan under his breath. “What a bunch of crap. If they’re so fucking talented, why can’t I get a hot cup of coffee without a fuss?” He then noticed the blinking message button on his phone. Simon jabbed the button and began rooting around his desk drawer for a stick of gum.
“Mr. Commissioner? This is Adalean from the Alumni Watch program and we have a problem.” The woman’s voice hesitated as if she wasn’t sure how much information to record. She dropped her formal tone and continued. “Look, we have a huge problem, ok? Opal has gone AWOL and despite throwing every resource we have in Arizona towards this, we can’t find the bastard. He’s been gone three hours. Call me as soon as you get this.” The click as she hung up was loud enough to make Simon flinch. He had stopped rooting by the end of the message and sat ridged in his chair.
The Watch program did just that. After decades of trial and error, the top Doctors who work within St. Jude detected a type of shock and guilt manifesting itself in the Agents that was usually reserved for the Marines. Those working for the Watch program didn’t like to think they were controlling the lives of those they Watched—just keeping them safe from themselves. And from anyone who might believe the stories cramming the former Agents’ brains.
“Walter,” Simon said. He slammed his clenched fist onto the desk—sending pens skittering to the floor. “God damnit, Walter,” he shouted. A few moments later, a woman in her thirty’s opened the door slowly, knocking as she did so. She stared at Simon, her brown eyes wide, her hands fumbling with her elaborately braided hair. “Is,” she started, stuttered, and began again ”is everything alright, Mr. Commissioner?” He didn’t answer, just stared hard at the wall opposite the desk. She tried again. “Is there anything I can do for you?” She asked her voice a little stronger. “Yes,” Simon answered immediately, “get Adalean from the Alumni Watch program in here as fast as you can. Take her out of whatever meeting she’s in and get her here.” Simon turned toward the assistant. “I don’t care if you have to pull a pistol on her, I want to be speaking with her in ten minutes, do you understand?” The woman nodded, her chin quivering, and closed the door behind her.
The squeak of rubber against hospital floors, those hurried, panicked steps—perhaps this is the first thing she remembers. However, when she reaches back, it’s not the sound that comes first; it’s the feeling of rough wool against feverish skin.
The twenty-something mother clutches the bundle to her chest. She peaks into it occasionally as she hurries through the halls, racing after the physician who walks silently on his plastic soles. A small hand reaches out to touch her face before she folds it back into the blanket.
She remembers this face. Haggard and scared, blonde hair flying. The eyes swimming up from lashes that resemble spider legs. That mouth moves to say something just beyond her hearing as the bundle is passed into other reaching hands.
The doctors unwrap the small girl and lay her gingerly on the steel bed. Her skin turns to gooseflesh as it touches the metal.
She doesn’t remember voices but surely they spoke. Adults are forever speaking. The bed was enormous. She swears she could spread her arms wide and still not touch either side. It was probably a standard bed. Fevers tend to warp perceptions.
***
She stands in front of the mirror, inspecting. She sucks in her cheeks and thinks; This is what I will look like when I am beautiful and older. She forces her face into a grimace, consults the mirror on its authenticity, and walks slowly to her mother’s bedroom.
“Mom, I don’t feel very good. Can I stay home today?” She rubs her stomach for emphasis as she waits for an answer. Mother holds the hair dryer at an angel as she watches her daughter. The wet hair half-dried into a stylish flip reminds the girl of a ruffled duck. Mother is impressed by this show of theatrics. The girl is almost convincing. In a split moment, Mother makes her decision.
“Sure honey, if you feel bad stay home. You want me to bring you ginger ale and some crackers for your tummy?” The girl nods as if in pain and turns to head back to her room.
Some days, lying is easy.
She developed the idea one day while eating lunch in the girl’s bathroom. After all, she reasoned, how hard could faking sick be? Perhaps it was the Bus Bully’s comment that day. “We’d all be a lot better off if you would just go ahead and die. Everyone dies. You should kill yourself and make everyone happy, you Big Fat Pregnant Lady.” Pregnant Lady, a favorite insult. She was suddenly very aware of the small child’s-belly protruding over her belt loops. Some leaned in to watch her face as the whispered words were met with laughter and agreement among the small band of 5th graders surrounding her. She didn’t know any of their names. Bus Bully Leader, Bus Bully Leader’s best friend, Bus Bully who smells like Dad’s cologne. She ticked them off in her head as they came in and out of her peripheral vision. She preferred to pretend to be reading.
Now, she lets her mind dabble with the idea of never having to be near the bus or the school so long as she is sick.
For the next month she feigns the stomach flu.
***
It swells inside her—a beast. Ravenous hunger no longer manifests itself in pangs but as quick trigger temper and an air of smugness. Peaking out from her eyes, the beast waits with growing impatience.
She doesn’t know how this started. She’s tempted to claim it must have always been there in the distance—carefully choosing the perfect plan of attack, but she knows this is not the way it was. She remembers a time when she didn’t hate herself this much. Surely, there was a time when it wasn’t this bad. She just wanted them to stop calling her that name. No one stays on a treadmill—running this long unless there’s something in pursuit.
Now, she prefers the external bullies compared to this new horror wearing her skin like a costume. Now, they at least have the courtesy to spew bile once she’s out of earshot. As the pounds of flesh are melting, she searches her face in the mirror but no longer recognizes this skeletal thirteen-year-old, this human hat rack. Perhaps she thinks if she could just get her bones to the surface maybe she could inspect their marrow. That’s where her grandmother used to say character lived––in your bone marrow. She imagines her bones empty and light like a bird’s. She’s not sure why, but this image comes up again and again in her nightmares. Her skin wrapped about the brittle shards, falling quickly to the ground with nothing but two comically small feathers in each hand—flapping furiously with ludicrous optimism as the earth rushes up to meet her. Like an old friend.
***
Three years later, the rumors are still circulating. Some think her two-month absence was due to an unnamed and terrifying virus. Something they may have caught unawares while passing her in the halls. Some even more hopeful gossip mills claim she must have been sold to into suburban-white-girl slavery and then made a daring escape. Most, though, watched her return ever so slightly plumper but with that grim expression of one with a gun to their head. These people understood the abyss of pain behind her protruding shoulder blades jutting out dangerously from her back. These people kept their questions to themselves.
***
She sits on the red couch, computer in her lap. Mother enters the room, her navy pantsuit screaming for someone to take her seriously. “Meghan, what are you doing? Don’t you need to leave for class?” The girl on the couch looks up, all pretense gone. She follows Mother with her eyes as Mother approaches the small table adorned with keys, phones, change, and a variety of multi-colored bags.
“I can’t handle that place today. I’m staying home.” Mother nods slowly, still packing her purse for work, waiting for the play—the entertainment to begin, but it never comes.
“Well, alright, you’re the one who has to make up the work. Have a nice day off, sweetie.” Mother blows the girl a kiss and exits to the garage.
Both, later that day, find they are surprised at themselves. Never had such an honest exchange been held between them. How comfortable to be candid. Almost like two adults.
***
A slow, persistent cough erupts rhythmically from the back of the lecture hall. The small, tweed clad man in front of the chalkboard stumbles over his learned sentences. Several students turn in their chairs to face the noise.
“Ms.?” She is startled at being addressed as such. No longer all belly and moon-face, bones and fury, she has somehow stretched out enough to pass easily through these larger, collegiate hallways.
She hollers back across the rows of chairs, without the aid of a microphone. “Yes?” Her voice cracks under the strain of mucus.
“Are you quite alright, Ms.?” The teacher looks at her inquisitively, obviously annoyed at the break in his lecture. He has no idea where he will have to start again in order to remember it all.
“Just a touch of a cold. I’m fine, thanks.”