SCLERODERMA AND VENEER
by G. Barker

My mother's home is scleroderma, crushing all who enter
as if it were their own lethal, tightening skin.
I feel it squeeze my insides when she hands me
watery instant coffee with a froth that swirls and does not rest
or lemon sandwich cookies months past their use-by date
or newspaper clippings about anal warts
or when she speaks in earnest of her neighbors' troubled lives.
They have pinched nerves, suicidal children, hives.
She's so proud of me, she says.
She misses me.
I want to whimper, to whisper, to bolt, but I shout so she can hear
and then she asks me why I'm angry.
She's not wearing her hearing aid because she says it hurts her ear.
We feed stale cookies to the silence.
I age.
 
Her walls are brown veneer to cover the scars of a fire more than 40 years ago.
That's what veneer is for.
Cover your scars, cover them all.
Her wall-to-wall carpet is also brown.
Improperly installed, it puckers in rude bunches
against the floor and kisses my feet when I walk --
pretending love to make me fall, so it can catch me when I do.
 
The screen door slaps against her house in every gust of wind.
Its spring is broken.
There is no latch.
Sometimes she tries to hold it shut with the tension of a rubber band,
as if there is a shortage of tension and she must improvise ways to add more.
More tension.
More.
 
She asks me, will you spend the night?
The room in the back is better than it was.
The heater there will keep you warm.
Ignore the burning smell, she says, it's only dust,
and did I know that dust is mostly skin?
 
Her filigree wood furniture is brown; her curtains barricade the light.
I breathe the stale air although I try to hold my breath,
and I wait for the house to murder me,
to constrict the tissue of my lungs until there is no room for air.
I know its secrets.
I was there.

 

 

G. BARKER writes stories and poems and assorted other things.