Watch Your Step

This is why I strive to be normal. Like Ethan Allen normal. Anne Taylor, Talbot's, although truly I have never set foot in any of those stores. It's not working for me, this poetry of the norm. For inside my veins pumps blood chunky with glitter. When you prick me, do I not shine?


This is my mother's house. Yes, that is a snakeskin draped on the ceiling, a horn twisting out of the wall. Over there is a thing and a that, a few different huhs? and one very pronounced oh, dear.

This little lady moved in a few years ago. I really can't say if she is dressed for the holiday or if this is her regular attire. She can't really say either.

Oh, that. Yeah. We don't much talk about that.

Dripping candles, dust, dried flowers, curling photos, two turn tables and a microphone. I would not be half surprised to see a wedding cake still on the table. Miss Havisham would be right at home.

Care to watch some tv? I'm afraid the only thing on is a show about a Japanese mask.

To be fair, most of this is Allen's doing. This is where he lives, but my mother's apartment in the city is not much different. Here is Allen with their African Grey Parrot named Huxley. When my mom bought the parrot she said that now my brother and I would get to hear her voice long after she dies. And Huxley does talk in both their voices. He can perfectly mimic the sounds of Allen's wheelchair, the doorbell. He tells the dog to stop barking. Ring ring! goes the phone. Hello? Oh, hi! Mmhm. Yup, okay, ha ha ha ha! For the next 65 years I get to hear my mother's one-sided conversation and the trill of her fake phone laugh.

I agree with this one.

At my mother's house I often find myself thinking about the movie "Being John Malcovich." I liked that movie but if pressed could not really say what it was about. The same goes for my mother's house. Sometimes I leave there confused, repeatedly blinking my eyes to the bright sunshine of the outside.

More. Never less. Not Yes, no, this is the House of More.

My mother's closet. Let's see: this coat with that skirt? The brown sweater with those jeans? But does it clash with the toad mask? Hmmm...

Yesterday was Thanksgiving, the annual holiday of eating with your family and wondering just how the Hell you came to sit in that chair. Happy that. There is no such thing as normal. Because blood flows in many different ways, in chintz and chenille, heavy with dust and thin with regret. Mine just so happens to run ragged with plastic masks, Buddha and the bones of small creatures. This is my family. Welcome.