Ma and Pa
Capable and copper toned, my mother told me I had perfect, olive colored skin. “I’m going to tell you something, something you might not know. You aren’t good looking, you’re beautiful.”
Dad was rough around the edges but had insides like hot red wine that stalked a thick glass of whiskey. Whiskey that had been reluctantly consumed out of spite. He hand washed the glass before letting two more clammy ounces slink into the pit of it. The cold white kitchen sink sat in a slab of marble.
Cinder, from one of those flamenco guitars he serenades that had been left in a shredding fire. Maybe that’s how it feels to be him. A walking, abstract immensity.
I’ve never seen you run. I think it adds to the weight of your personality.
I can’t credit Mexico for building a passion like that. You can only credit a thing like that to pain. There’s a sobering stone that holds hands with the hurt, and some try to counteract its gravity with a lack of sobriety. But not you. I never thought something could be so objective. Euphoria spreads vaporous clouds over my nervous system, and pain grounds my wet, concrete soul. I’m certain of which sensation I prefer.
Dad, I hope you find sleep like I did during our drive to hell and back through the desert of Mexico. I could sleep for hours on the bed of suitcases in the back of our Ford bus. The nights were spent upside down, looking at the blue bottle sky out of the side window of the trunk, and the stars that seemed to swim along side us like feeder fish as our tires pitter pattered down a sandy trail. The night sky doesn’t look much different when you’re upside down.
Salty sea dried skin. Passion, for me, started here. The pacific was not the first woman to instill ardor in me. Although she embraced me with her all-encompassing arms, I never took my eyes off of you. You called me to shore and took me home to shower the sand out of my hair, which I did with the hesitation of the cold cadillac engine you started with dad, when you were my age. I still yearn for the salty coating on my skin that carved my emotion into cavernous, caramel colored sea cliffs.
Mom, I’ll never stand by anyone like I have stood by you. I think part of me is still there, like a permanent ornament or a good dog — the kind you only meet in one of your nine lives. Dad showed me the heat of a weighty existence, and the maturity of a billowing cloud of breath on a cold morning. He gave me an appreciation for being present, even in turmoil. You showed me love.
A southern belle, you have a heart that was planted and grown in the front yard of a small house in Greenbrier, Tennessee. Sown in the moment the cicadas saturated the countryside with chirps of relief, and I hear Wild Horses start to play in my head. There’s something easy about this kind of southern comfort. What’s passion if not a slice of pecan pie with home made ice cream?
Dry, cracked tires on granola-shaped gravel. That’s what your presence sounds like. Mom has a heart like a baby tiger, without the instinct to kill. The demeanor of a barefoot girl in a summer dress, dancing with a tall glass of sweet tea, in a sea of even taller grass. Papa tried to instill the fear of God in you but managed nothing more than a tonic of tolerance that left you love drunk, filled to the brim with rhythm.
Fingertips tried to sculpt me in every way imaginable. Some believed I was colored with an open mind. Some even spoke of hard work in regards to my persona. You worked your palms like clay and put in more than your weight in elbow grease to portray your idea of a life worth living. A person worth being.
Neither of you saw me standing behind you, intoxicated by your performance. Absorbing, soaking up, bathing in your display of passion.
