Brief Landing on the Earth's Surface

Where My Mother Cries

Where My Mother Cries It is always November, the driveway lined with gold. the air rich with the smell ofburning leaves. Other years she placed the brightest leaves in silver bowls with evergreens and mums; the house was sweet with autumn. In order 1 10t to ruin a picture I've made for her at school, a woman and a girl. I walk carefully. The woman is tall, her hair a fury ofgold. The two are smiling in the face ofruin: trees with black leaves, a burning house, smoke drifting in a capsized bowl ofsky. I know the sky is not really a bowl. It goes on forever, like time, that will change me to a woman, claiming everything. I enter the dark house. In the kitchen. a row ofpots gleams gold against the wall. I leave my jacket on a hook. neady, as jfruin did not live here, as ifruin were not a dark bowl my mother has fallen into. and will not leave. She seems like someone else, another woman with her skin. her eyes, her brown hair shot with gold and gray. She is not at home in this house J' rhough she sirs in (he house all day in a ruin ofyarn, knirs a scarfthe muddy gold ofmustard. grows rhinowill not eat from the bowls ofsoup my father offers. Once a woman begins fO leave she might leave everything, her house. her children. Once the woman recogOlzes rum, it might be everywhere. in someone's hands. or in a bowl ofsoup, the rich broth yellow as fool's gold. Whert my mother m'es, a womangathers auh~mn kaves. They look likegold, orsummer's ruin. The silver bowls are mine. Thert is no hOUIe. 32 ...