Limitations, Grace Tobin

 

Shortly after my dad shot and killed himself

I visited my mom at the Town Tavern.

She looked like a vampire, drained, rejecting

life-giving blood from its only son.

 

On a barstool next to her, I stared through

bottled spirits at her haunting gray reflection

befogging the silver and black-spotted mirror.

 

With a weak grasp of her shot glass

she raised her skeletal arm, dragging its skin.

We toasted my father’s eternal damnation.

 

Our glasses clacked a short-lived lonely slap.

With a single swallow and a shallow gasp

she exhaled her confession: I killed him.

 

In a staggered march over shelled peanuts

she made her way to the jukebox.

Bony fingers pecked a well-rehearsed combination—

George Jones’s hit single: He Stopped Loving Her Today.

 

In a wavy return, her parched lips mimed

the first line, which fully executed her late husband’s

contract before God: He said I’ll love her ’til I die.

 

I shot up to save her direction. I coaxed her hollow body

to the dance floor. In a forsaken embrace, I felt

Jones’s chorus beat and beat her heart on my chest.

 

I clumsily trumpeted my fingers over the small

of her back—my childish attempt at resuscitating

my father’s maneuver, which led her once vibrant

body over sprinkled sawdust, entwined as one

in weightless whirls.