Intimacy

(responding to the conversation with Nicky and Paige, et all)

I don't talk to my mother. This is the closest I can be to her. On the other side of the world. So we both can breath. And share in the seven year air cycle.

But this is not intimacy. This is stagnation.

I had asked when I was growing into Gabe: mom, why can't we BrEath together?

My mother is as thin as rice paper, disappearing in the mouth. I think her lungs came out of her the morning her aborted baby did in the bathtub. My aunt tells me she was 12. My aunt was 11. She got an abortion too. Thanks, Uncle Jim.

My mother is confounded by my existence. I told her I was going to live in the woods, eat from garbage bins, and make "art." She wanted to hospitalize me. She wanted me to be more like my sister, not my brother.

She yelled at me a few Halloweens a go when I couldn't apply a swipe of dried animal souls-turned blue across her eyelids. I guess she didn't realize that I had failed all her expectations the moment I was born.

Lucky me.

So here I am. How could I NOT be what I am? I SEEK the care I was denied. It took a while to realize that I was looking in the wrong places and just had to turn to a mirror to find it.

So let me hold that mirror to you. Maybe we can care about EACH other and stop seeking "undying" love from a partner and "unconditional" love from our parents. bei LIE ve.



Look at my face.

This is the mirror.

Not my mouth.