This morning, beginning around 5:30am
my world shifted and changed immeasurably.
The effects of this change, for the moment,
remain obscured and ambiguous.
New territory is being surveyed
with an assiduous eye.
Would that I could be less cryptic-
but it’s not for here..

Also, today being Mother’s Day
put me in for another pause,
as it always does. Normally,
it doesn’t affect me greatly-
but something about seeing
so many maternal visages
bustling about with candy roses
and pink cheeks made me
feel slightly forlorn.
I remember asking to sit
this one holiday out during
activity session in elementary
school- staunchly refusing
to make cards for my dead mother.
Even then I loathed exercises in futility.
I was told to make one for
my grandmother or my aunt, instead.
It’s been almost 20 years since she died,
and I don’t think I’ve even begun
to process the first decade.
Hum.
Anyhow, she was an incredible woman-
and I would have liked to have known
her, less briefly than I did.
The commonalities between us
are remarked upon as being
slightly uncanny- everything
from gesture and figure of speech,
to peccadilloes of taste and aesthetics.
I know it’s this way for a reason,
but I still can’t help feeling cheated.
I still sometimes do this ridiculous thing
when I see a middle-aged woman
with red hair, green eyes and pale skin-
wondering if it’s been a trick all along,
if it could be her- if she would recognize me?
Would I recognize her?
Her name was Margaret, which means “pearl”,
but always makes me think instead of
red cabbage roses trailing briars.

This is her, and one of her paintings.
She traded it for a Martin guitar
to a man who raised wolves.
He may have been her lover.

This is me before she died,
looking like I feel today:

I found out tonight that
my stalker is dead, two years
dead, actually- I just never knew.
He died in the psychiatric ward,
in prison of “unknown causes”.
He had stalked me for about four years-
and was arrested for it, twice.
Nobody ever really believed
that he was dangerous.
I had to testify against him
after he bludgeoned his mother
to death with several objects,
including a hammer,
pruning shears, and a rock.
He was found naked,
walking down the road
covered in her blood.

This was his mother,
at Alma de Mujer with
 “Madre del Mundo”.

I meant to write something other
than this today, and in fact, I did-
but this is what came out instead.
There’s more that I haven’t the words for.
And so I’ll just let it be.