Mother comes to visit after a long sleep

Her clothes are hardened like the carapace of a beetle, her steps are mincing, her feet are unfriendly to the ground. She pleases you by taking a breath, sipping the air, her eyebrows raised in surprise as her lungs inflate once and then again. She has a lot to say, you can tell, but she’s holding back, noting what is undusted, unswept, untidied. 

(you put the things she might need in her purse: a handkerchief, a pair of gloves, the ceramic ashtray with a duck on it, the last lipstick she used, still bearing the imprint of her lips)

She comes back every year when the bridal wreath blooms: late April, early May, never in time for Mother’s Day. You need a haircut, which is what she always says. She disapproves of bangs and also of long hair in general, a matter of hygiene. You should wear more bright colors. 

(the last time in the car, driving through the old neighborhood, when she couldn’t remember which house they had lived in, back in the last century. Were you impatient?)

She would like a cup of coffee, even though you don’t have a percolator. She sighs in an exaggerated way when you get out the drip apparatus, the sigh a joke between you. Her hair is wild, a frothy halo. She touches everything when she thinks you aren’t looking. Her feet float just above the ground.

(on the last day you talked of snow. The nurses scurried like mice. You lay together in that last bed to hide from the world)