Six weeks
after I began ninth grade,
Mother went to bed.
She closed drapes, hid
autumn light, knotted
her body beneath winter blankets.
Seven years earlier,
her brother went to work
then crawled under his desk,
mumbling.
White jackets took him away
and whispers I overheard
spoke of electroshock therapy,
depression.
Confused by my feelings,
I asked no forgiveness
for liking the new quiet,
but it felt strange
to exist without her anger,
her disappointment.
I pedaled to the cemetery,
walked among tombstones,
sorting my unsettled mind
as I questioned skeletal remains.
There was John, the soldier
from South Carolina
whose brother had disappeared.
But not under blankets.
I asked James, the eldest
of ten children, what he knew
about living in the dark.
He kept it simple, suggested
I leave her alone,
get on with my life.
I bemoaned my transfer
to a new school,
but Daniel, who grew up
on a farm in south Georgia,
laughed, said school was school
and I should just shut up.
Or pack a bag and run away.
My choice.
I thanked them all,
bid them good night
and rode home
as streetlights began to buzz.
Is she thinking
about my mistakes,
storing up punishment
and criticism to use
when she gets well?
Will she get well?
And who is cooking dinner?
Linda Wimberly is a writer, artist and musician from Marietta, GA. A former Vermont Studio Center resident in writing, her poetry has appeared in The Raw Art Review, Lunch Ticket, Stone River Sky: An Anthology of Georgia Poems and others and a short story appeared in Cricket. She is a self-taught abstract artist and her images have appeared in or been cover art for jelly bucket, Critical Pass Review, Inscape Magazine and others. Her image “Woman on the Move” won the 2019 Art Contest for So to Speak: feminist journal of language and art. (lindawimberly.com)
