"mama,"



       He says, I would like to connect with stars.

       He pretends the fireworks are for his dad. They shatter when they reach the air and a million thousand arms rain down on the ocean before they fizzle, taken aqua and blue and green, and the seaweed entangles until there are just hands under the sea, holding. His mother holds a flag tucked in-between her fingers like a cigarette and sometimes she brings it up to her lips, her eyes rolling backwards—sometimes she forgets. Someone is throwing up in the bathroom.

       At home they stew, alone. It is easier to watch the pot when it refuses to boil, and she stares at the empty stove, fuming, bubbling. He plays with his fork and tries to stick it up his nose, and smiles at her, because he is a little boy and that is what they do: they stick things, they bury things, they break things. They hurt themselves. She begins to boil and smiles and plucks the silver from his palm, and says Honey, don't do that, but what she's saying is never stop, never grow old. He listens. He simmers.

       They never throw parties and when everyone comes to his house for the funeral and they coat the walls with skin and breath and they sip their drinks quietly and play somber music (His favorite classical, someone says, like they have the answers) he wonders if it is a different sort of party, a quiet one, with less dancing and noise and more tissues and snot. Someone is throwing up in the bathroom and he doesn't look at his mother. He figures that he can't dance, that he is too young to be expected to know how, and figures that when he is old, maybe fifteen or so, he will understand the great secret, and everyone will have forgotten. He figures this is a different kind of party and he wonders where the fireworks are, the presents; his father.

       Disappointing, he says. Excuse me? You asked me how my home life was, he says. Pause: chalkboard, pencils, keys, half-read eMail, desks, ties, Literary Devices:, blue door, white ceiling, brown tile, shaved head, fat green wedge eyes. Yes, but—what did you say, exactly? He says, I said, 'disappointing.'

       He is on her shoulders, his legs bowed around her neck. It does not occur to him that he could strangle her if he were to bend, scratch his legs, touch the top of her head; he absent-mindedly runs his fingers through the brown mass and she grits her teeth, hard. He leans out to touch the shivering, breaking, blooming and quivering mass of fireworks in the sky because they are so close, so close, but his fingers grasp at nothing. The air slips and works around his fingers like a protective, shelled glove, and he lets his hands droop. She brings the wooden flagpole up to her lips and tries to puff on it, before shaking her head and emitting a vengeful, Goddammit.

       They just—, he says. They just look so far away.



       "mama, i'm afraid of ghosts, i'm afraid of death, i'm afraid of loneliness, i'm afraid of abandonment, i'm afraid of"



       She makes an angry grab for his hand when they cross a street.

       No, she says, when he tries to snatch away. No, grab Mommy's—grab Mama's hand. There we go. Come on. He looks to the left and pulls a face at the sun. His mother rattles off a mental grocery list. He eats the sky with his tongue. What are you doing?, she says. Stop it. His tongue slithers back inside. He looks up at her, squinted eyes. What?, she says. It's just me.

       He asks if they are going to change their last name. She says, No, no, we're going to keep it, why would you think we would change it? The room is colored like white in his head but in reality is a dark reddish color, and it startles him every time he sees it, like opening up a vein and finding blood where you thought there was bone. In his room he scratches lyrics, quotes and lists on his walls, and when he was young he drew cartoons, little stick-figures with balloon eyes and cotton-cherry teeth, their skin blank and airy. It was easy to memorize: circle, line, line, line, line, circle, square, square: a man, a man and his dog, in a world with grass and sky and teeth and edges and feet, lots and lots of feet for lots and lots of wanderers. Simple, he thinks. No, she says, we are going to keep our last name, she says, she says, she says. I think we're—I—I need it.

       She has stopped walking him to school. She helps him put on his coat, lifts his arm into it, swathes his back with felt. Halfway down the sidewalk he tears it off his chest and hides it behind a bush and runs to school with his hands flung behind him. There is a doctor who tells him not to be ashamed, not to think it was his fault: It's not your fault, kid. It's not. No one did this to you, and he wonders why someone doesn't blame God or his mother or the sky or him, him, him. Every day on the way back it is still tucked behind the bush, green felt forced into a wonder wave, and he picks it up, slips his arm inside, and walks. Hi, Mama, he says, and the doorway greats him rigidly. Someone is throwing up in the bathroom and she opens the door and frowns at him, her eyes like a glaze on her face. She is crying and he hangs up his ugly green felt coat and walks upstairs, and she is crying, she is crying.

       I need you to talk to the nice man, she says. I think he can help you. He is going to help you. He polishes his teeth and rubs the sweat under his arms, grinning. His eyes are green, his hair is wooden. He has a smile like a beacon. His hands are the kind that were made to reach out, to extend the fingers, to pull. No, he says. He can't help me. Send him back.

       He looks away, towards the grocery store doors. I know it's been hard, she says, and he wonders why she is having this talk now, and if it was a movie, the director would've picked a more scenic location, a better place to do it in; the director would've picked better lines, more interesting dialog, a prettier actress. He looks at his mother's face, a chalkboard and a long dusty road, and immediately feels bad. She picks at the tissued bone in her ear and says, I know it's been hard, but we'll make it. Okay? He wonders if he should nod, hug her, say something. His mouth is dry and he can taste feathers, spurting back up out of his throat, a heavy course of vomit. She is irritated by his silence. We just need a few things, she explains, and walks forward, quickly. Someone is throwing up in the bathroom, making a scratching sound throughout the house, and it doesn't evaporate, assimilate into the walls and up into the sky where it can die in the open palms of stars.

       He does not have to wrench his hand out of hers. She simply lets go.



       "mama, i'm afraid of"



       Someone is throwing up in the bathroom.

       She opens the door and he is forced to take in the full grasp of her: black dress to capped knees, a tear on her arm, a wither in her smile. She looks at him sideways and he wonders if he should make her walk in a straight line, if he should suck in her breath and test it in his stomach, if he should check her eyes for red roads and stop signs.

       Come here, she says. Come here, please. Come here.

       She has opened up her chest for him. He knows what she is expecting: an embrace, a soiled cry, a smashed kiss on his forehead, on her cheek. He is not ready. Something bubbles in his stomach and he steps back.

       How long have I been in here for?, she asks nothing, and a woman walks behind them; she is a black blur of red lipstick and swollen eyes like sucker candies, and a nose that has been bloated with red cream. She walks by quickly and he figures that they are forgiven, because it is July seventh and they are at his father's funeral and the fireworks were not for him, they were for bloodied red coats and America and freedom and stars, so many stars, scattered like white berries in a bush, exploding so far away and you can't touch them, can't stop them, fireworks that have drowned in the sea; the explosion. Oh, come here, she says, and her arms extend.

       Mama, he says, quietly. I just have to pee. Mama—

       Someone is throwing up in the bathroom and he doesn't look at his mother. Someone is throwing up in the bathroom when she opens the door and frowns at him, her eyes like a glaze on her face. Someone is throwing up in the bathroom, making a scratching sound throughout the house, and it doesn't evaporate, assimilate into the walls and up into the sky where it can die in the open palms of stars. Someone is throwing up in the bathroom and a long, thin line of browned vomit trails down his black coat, reaching for his feet, grabbing at his stomach. She grabs him, and her heat is made of blushes, of something gone, of an empty blanket, of cold feet.

       Mama. He is still in her arms.



       "mama."