Proxy
- Proxy
On the eve of my separation, she tells me to text her every day, So I don’t have to worry.
I’ve grown up to fail at what she raised me to do.I was her small confidant, an eager untrained therapist.I sat on the toilet while she took a bath.We talked about my father— everything we could think of that was wrong with him— his weight, the underwear he left on the floor, his spitting rage.
My mother’s fears for me are fixed over instant coffee and the Weather Channel.Who will take care of you?Don’t drive your car into a snowstorm.Do you really have to fly?
How hard it must be to have lost the girl who perched on the porcelain and took it all in.The one who asked, Yes? and What else did he do? [End Page 209]
Carley Moore is a poet, novelist, and essayist. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in the American Poetry Review, Aufgabe, Brain, Child, the Brooklyn Rail, Fence, the Journal of Popular Culture, Mutha, and Linebreak. Her debut young adult novel, The Stalker Chronicles, was published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux in 2012. Follow her on Twitter at carleymoore2 or find her blogging at carleymoorewrites.com.
