thoughts

It happened when I was just a little girl. My mother dying. I was there. I saw it, although i don't remember anything except colors. Red and purple, yellow and green. And blue - everywhere - a deep, endless blue. It was early summer. The colors were her garden. Roses and irises, tulips, and daffodils. Grass and sky. I don't remember screaming, although I've been told I screamed myself voiceless, the noise bringing Cassie and then neighbors and then the ambulance with the wail loud enough to finally trown me out. It didn't change anything- the people, the ambulance. My mother died before my very eyes, and that's what they say made me who I am. The trouble, the bad grades, the problem with authority figures (namely my father), the willfulness. It all came from that moment I saw my mothers eyes fall never to re-open , never to get up and hold me again, wipe away my tears. My beautiful, laughing mother. Suddenly so quiet and so still. Something bursting inside her brain. A tiny time bomb. A tiny time bomb waiting all her life to go off. A death just waiting to happen. And sometimes, when I'm trying to remember the things that came before- the fell of her breath against my cheek, the sound of her voice saying my name- I start thinking about what's underneath my own skin. I start wondering what's inside me, ticking ready to go off.