It isn’t fair. I know I say that a lot. I know I complain that the world has become too heavy for me. I know it could be worse. Again, I am on the edge of breaking down.

I just got off the phone with the cat’s veterinarian. It is uncertain when E. will be back to get his cats and the medicine has run out. The cost for a month’s supply is $60.

I don’t have it. The alternative is the cat will die. Either by me not administering the meds., or the Humane Society putting her down. I’m finding it hard to deal with either result.

Parralel to this situation is the one with my mom.

Yesterday, in the doctor’s office, I requested that he please sign her over to me. I can’t continue to care for her from a distance, and she refuses to move nearby on her own accord. He assures me that when the house burns down…the state will automatically do that.

She gets angry with me. She tells the doctor she doesn’t want to live by me because I yell too much.

It’s true. I get frustrated and angry. She does too, but it’s different with her because she forgets that she’s angry in the next moment.

I find a stain on my skirt and want to ask her how to launder it, and hesitate knowing the conversation will go no where, and so I don’t.

She remembers we forgot to put gas in the car. I wonder how she remembers some things and not the others.

She sees me making plans for my wedding, lights up and asks again when the date is. I tell her, again, heart breaking…wishing she was well enough to remember at least that; at least be excited with me about the wedding.

It’s time to go.

Coming out into the light…I feel the weight of the darkness leave me, dissolve into the atmosphere with the sound of the sunset birds and the evening breeze and I wonder why we didn’t sit out here instead of inside there.

She is a Mother Moon, constant gravitational pull, that at times is larger, and then wanes, but the cycle continues…the pulling…and I pull back and out of her driveway.

I look one more time to see her standing there, perplexed, sad and small…standing there in front of her house. She takes two steps towards me, and I wonder if maybe she forgot to tell me something.

I see her and I come to understand that right now, there are only two choices for me that must be made by me. I either leave her to the wolves, or I move home.

Mow the lawn on the weekends.

Shovel the snow.

Make the appointments.

Pay the bills.

Shop for groceries.

{I die inside}

Upon arriving home, I pour a martini. It doesn’t look big enough, so I make it a double and try to numb myself with a Lifetime movie. I fall asleep before they reveal who the killer is. I wake up, it’s still night, worries still hanging around my head, still drunk, I stumble through the dark. I begin to feel resentful and I try to place it somewhere. The blame belongs to no one.

I am about to dismantle and leave.

Start again.

Retract.

Maybe there’s a light I just don’t see yet?

Stupid rednecks in their pickup trucks.

I hate that town.

A country art studio?

I’m so good at being a recluse.

Maybe it’s possible for me to dissolve into the atmosphere with the darkness and the heavy.

Paint.

Write.

Make certain my mom is drinking enough water.

If I had money, I would buy her care…I wouldn’t be the one giving it. I am selfish, but not selfish enough to launch far far away, like they all told me to do, but I never truly did, and whenever I tried, the Mother Moon pulled on me. It’s not her fault.

I submerse my skirt in OxyClean and try to scrub the stain away. No luck. I leave it to soak, imagining that all will be well in the morning, but in the light of the new day, I pull it from the tub to see the stain is still there, dark, heavy and dripping. The sound of the water falling calms me, the skirt growing lighter as the water leaves it. One of the cats rubs against my shins, I look down to her round green eyes and see clumps of fur wet from the water that does not phase this sickly cat. The veterinarian said I could bring her in when I feel the time is right, at my own accord, like I could ever do such a thing, like anyone could ever do such a thing, but people do such a thing somewhere in this world, just not here…not today anyway.