Poetry |

“Today My Mother Called to Apologize”

Today My Mother Called to Apologize

 

 

Nothing else — she wanted to hang up

immediately after. She is 92. I am 64.

When I was 3, she put me in a diaper

to punish me for an accident.

 

Maybe you would’ve turned out

better, she said. Without that. I wanted

to weep — my earliest memory:

in the hallway, younger siblings staring,

 

older, turning away. She had five kids

in seven years. If you wanna be

a baby, I’ll treat you like one.

The cloth diaper sagged its awkward

 

bulk between my legs. How long

did you make me wear it? I wanted to ask,

but she’d had enough of her daily shames:

blindness, wheelchair, and someone else

 

wiping her ass. We gave my son an M&M

every time he peed in the toilet. Two

for poop. My daughter didn’t need the bribe.

Rank your humiliations on a scale

 

of one to ten. I hadn’t thought of it

in years. Giddy with sliding on rugs

down the slick tiled floor. The exhaust

fan rattling useless in August heat.

 

Windows stuck in humid air. My mother

yanked and struggled. My father at work, then

and always. Factory darkness we could not

imagine, like deep dirt in the yard,

 

cold black beneath the frayed weeds

of our primitive growing. Alone

with five kids. Don’t lose any sleep

over it, I told her. It came out cruel.

 

She sounded hurt. What will I apologize

to my children for at the end, alone

with the TV drone of faraway voices?

My father says it’s too long a drive

 

to visit us anymore, my mother unable

to navigate, or notice when he drifts

off. Scar tissue tears with sharp pain,

then eases to let you move further, forward.

 

Today my mother dialed 3 on her phone

with the giant numbers that connects us,

for I am the middle child. Years ago

I punched a hole in the wall at the end

 

of that hallway, and even after my father

repaired it, you could see its outline there.

Cruelty has its place, and its place was there.

What did she do after hanging up?

 

Sitting in her chair by the window

did she feel sunshine hitting her face

blessing her with forgiveness?

I’ll be good, I should have said.

 

Or maybe gone back

to sing her a lullaby.

Contributor
Jim Daniels

Jim Daniels’ latest poetry collection is Comment Card (Carnegie Mellon, 2024). His new fiction collection is The Luck of the Fall (Michigan State University Press, 2023). A native of Detroit, he lives in Pittsburgh and teaches in the Alma College low-residency MFA program.

Posted in Poetry

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