Sandra Doller

What if reading Melville doesn’t do it for me, what if I can’t get beyond my critique of the male me I could be. When she asks why she asks it why why why why why, but pronounces whoy whoy whoy whoy whoy, so as to call attention to the very constructedness of the questioning word and its repetition, as if we are both in on the joke, the serious joke, of whyness. I can write about how she keeps one finger in her mouth or her nose in all photos but then I think of the person that is her and the words that will remain a trace and even if they go nowhere but here why would I want her to know her mother’s own true thoughts, no one wants to hear that. It’s like staring into the abyss of mise-en-abîme mirrors, or Sigourney Weaver in Alien, you will complode. If I do this every day does it make it daily. I barely brush my teeth, the floor is covered in jungle and Easter baskets and plastic grass from the neighbor. I made every point to get the recycled easy to clean kind and then in walks the better shinier plastic Easter grass that will never go away. What else do I see, what is around here. Without turning my back I know there are balloons on the ceiling and matching cards unmatched on the floor and typos in front of me where I can see. A family of plastic pigs shares space with unicorns, or alicorns, which is a stupid name for a pegasus unicorn. When should I tell her we almost named her Pegasus but I didn’t like to call her Peg.

This is your last kitchen. How many people have that, think that, eat that thought for breakfast, take it out for a spin around the block. How many have a block. Are you trying to connect or resect. What is this body doing here and when do we get to stop asking that question. When your teeth aren’t taken care of for you, nothing else matters. We spin around around in a pod like those cartoons drinking big gulps of a Big Gulp getting our nails colored inside the lines only. I was room parenting when you walked in. I had drawn big bubbly letters that said Sequoia Tree, making sure to correct the spelling, making sure not to lock the hatch on my way out. Like Neil Armstrong. Buzz Aldren wants to qualify the moon, I mean colonize Mars, did you hear that. Someone let him write an Op Ed and he said it loud and proud. Maybe we should have locked the hatch on that Hollywood set. What Americans do well—movies and pretend. I’m not saying That.

Dress up. Ogle. Google. Capsize. I let the children draw all over the poster board, outside the lines of the letters S E Q U O I A T R E E. We related the facts to their sizes—one tree is 100 children tall, 1000 children old, 20 children around, the bark is 1 child wide. I made them sequoias poof. I was not parenting or rooming. What would Mary Kelly do and what would her child Kelly Kelly do. So she is mother plus child named. Half mother half child which seems fair. My father recently admitted that more genes come from the mother but they—mad males—have always wanted to say 50-50 just in case we rose from our ash beds and demanded our children back. How could we do such a thing we are too busy typing and on our phones, of which we own 5 billion, more than the people in existence when I was born.

We are too busy calculating our earned income credit or mortgage dividend or some other piece that will buy us a feathered boot which will open another door and create another obligatory bond. I hear noises outside the house, my building, and will run out the back door like the junkie nurse when I accidentally toured her apartment with her landlord. There she was shivering in the shower, then out the back, hiding under some steps, covering, what a view I am. The building makes the sequence. Closet, stairs, backness. I am not writing this I am thinking it. I did not think it before I wrote it. I did not make it I had an idea and then I did nothing and now I live under a tree. I am outside my body at least once a day. I see elephants running under the side of my eye, eaves until I realize it is traffic. I dream of rats under the floorboards and am pretty sure I am right about it, everything. Why do we mother: for once we have something, are needed, plus authority. We will never solve the puzzle this way and imaginary science will continue to ambush and colonize each wave, a puddle on the port just outside the view.

Mrs. Featherbottom calls me from below to ask if I can bring her some more. I tell her I have no more and am not in a bringing kind of way. I wish I told Mrs. Featherbottom that. I wish Mrs. Featherbottom called me anymore. There’s not much below Mrs. Featherbottom if you’re really calculating it out. We have two different kinds of decision making and no one is talking about the third thing. We used to shoot holes in our stories and now it’s each other. Floors of cars in the rain. The small person here told me about what a balaclava is before I could even look it up. Don’t tell me I said I want to look it up. Don’t go ahead and know things already. Who said you could get here before me. Who is in the business of arriving. I will do this everyday until I don’t. I have found that is the perfect excuse for any occasion—it was working until it wasn’t. I wanted this until I didn’t. I was happy until. A small bear covered dog sits on the floor expecting other animals to arrive. She is her own personal tea party. Someday good you’ll get to be a fool again. Someday fool you’ll taste a different kind of cobbler than Mrs. Featherbottom is offering. She’s not offering anymore. I negate this I negate that. See how I built the thing while negating the thing. See how I can take away anything I want. How many ways do you want to understand that thing. I can take a way what I want. I didn’t want it anyway.

The collected texts of my sister would read something like we miss you how are you are you hanging in there did you get my message have you called mom back did you answer aunt junebug’s letter did you hear about aunt junebug did you know aunt junebug is homeless again did you know aunt junebug died. There is a definite skunkishness following me. Her. We could call it birdlike but that would be minimizing the pain. In the comparison of oppressions fastest wins. We have a rich history of saying no. That pulled me in right away. A song follows me in the room. I look up videos of other people singing it. I realize there is a film of me making good before film was a thing. There’s a special kind of song that you care about so much you say Look I don’t care what you do to me but this song, don’t touch.