Leslie Cairns
Cassiopeia
My Mom was ivy spires, rivets with edges jagged
from being cut off with pliers, the way she screamed with fists.
I aspired never to be like her. I hoped that if you opened me
like a butternut squash, fresh from the vine, to turn into baked boats in ovens,
you wouldn’t find half of her there, when you split me down the middle.
She was once in a hot tub with churning water & cradled heads
near rose & merlot & sprawls of IPAs around her like a fallen down canopy.
& her falsetto voice singing Adele was the bluest, somber, ombre note. So much so
that I almost thought her hair would turn into mermaid. I almost thought
she’d never hurt me at all.
Standing, hugging the doorframe – almost staying behind – almost not
saying goodbye to her, in silence. Her voice could do that to you.
She could hit the high notes. My aunt saying in the car once, at 8, that:
mymomsvoicewasanangels, & Ibetternotforgetit. Speaking so fast about mom
& in ways that didn’t seem to match how she treated me, that I was wondering
if we were talking about the same person. But, yes, my Mom was a soprano.
No one could take that away from her. & when she sang,
you almost thought she loved you.
***
Now, I would kill to be a mermaid in manufactured & too scalding water.
“A dollar, or spare change?” I ask the strangers as they drive down I-95.
People around me look: raised brows, noticing.
Acting almost like I don’t belong there.
A weird sort of homeless.
We flail until we lose
love, until we lose home,
until words that used to lull us to sleep are
cross bones on a skull.
Help me.
I’d love sparkling water one more time.
My stomach gurgles. I don’t drink like she did; I just can’t afford home.
I’m making a pine tree my living room; the stars I name
with different flavors of tea.
Orien’s Belt is ginger,
North star is ginseng.
Cassiopeia is lemon or peppermint.
And, then, I almost convince myself that
I am sipping tea instead of stars & that
my belly is fully of galaxies.
I pivot towards the biggest crowd (about 20), waiting for brunch.
I used to love eggs benedict, made the way my friends made it.
I open my mouth. Remember when I sang
Blackbird, or ‘Maybe’ from Annie, that my voice echoed hers.
Soprano notes in bathtubs. A way we sang something – something – that we shared.
“Maybe this time…” I start.
A few people turn at me, eyes widen.
Fear like mountain tops.
“Maybe this time, I’ll be happy…”
“Maybe this time, you’ll stay…”
Speeding up: I’m sparrow & I’m flying notes that match yours,
the way you used to sing in hot tubs and
I would almost think you loved me.
As I sing, people keep putting money into my fedora.
I sing & spurt the way you taught me.
Maybe – tonight – I’ll sleep in a bed,
instead of stars that wait for me.
Leslie Cairns lives in Denver, CO. She has a prose chapbook, The Food is the Fodder, with Bottlecap Press. She also has upcoming work in Ellipsis Letters, Fulminare Review, Moss Puppy Mag, and others.
