from Startles

Mother 1 and Mother 2 drink an Ensure together at the wooden table beside loopy vines in the window. Mother 2 has a mug of tea (PG Tips, two Splenda packets, a dollop of honey, lots of milk). Mother 1 was a drinker of coffee (percolated, instant) until she lost interest in boiling water. Mother 1 drinks from the bottle, while Mother 2 from a kids’ pink sippy cup with straw a friend brought her the other day. Mother 1 has left breath’s frail envelope, while Mother 2 still abides there.

Anne says sometimes that she is not Anne, while Martha knows herself in a way we cannot. Names shed like layers of clothing; She wonders how Anne remembers she is not Anne, as that suggests she once owned that name. My name acquires the stiffness of molting skin. It exists as scraps on the ground, a wrinkled thing.

Anne calls Lilith “that thing” before saying “that animal” before the name “Lilith” emerges from the molt. To die is to discharge, dislocate, dissemble even, if one’s name is a truth we’ve lived by. Martha loved a dog with many names before her mother put him down. The remover was removed.

Their conversation's brief, occurring in a space where words once sounded. Martha’s stories hang like baby clothes on a line, or like tiny mourning shrouds. Anne’s paintings scatter about the room, portraits of friends, animals, nightmares of political figures. See the white horse of the resurrection beside the president’s bloated orange face? See the word NO screaming across a canvas?

I owe to one my words, to the other a less complicated kindness. The staccato of English, to being and not to being, the soft running of paint from a brush. Time chopped like vegetables on a wooden plank, or time lovingly rejoined. Mother 1 was melancholia; Mother 2 mourning, a simpler syntax. Essere is non essere; there's no question there.