Finite

My mother
called today.
Wanted to know when I had
time to come to lunch with her.
I don't want to have
lunch with my
mother.
So I told her I'm
simply too busy to
get away for a while.
She understood.
She told me she went
to get her eyes checked
last week.
The optometrist is sending her
to a retinologist. There's been some
bleeding in the retinas.
She just wanted me to know
she won't be in town
that morning. Because it could
take a while. I've never
heard my mother's voice
sound so small.
And it made me think
of her mother, and the way she
looked the night we came
to identify the body (you have to
identify the body, even if the
murderer is old age).
Small and drawn
into her body, and I
realized then she was
just a body, and would be
from then on.
Mortality is an ugly thing.
My mother,
she's scared. And I think she
sees her mother, too.
When the one who births you dies,
you truly realize finiteness. Your beginning
has ended.
My mother is
aware of this, dreadfully
aware. And so she
called me, to ask me
to lunch.
And now, all I want
to do is have lunch
with my mother.
To let myself know
that my beginning has
no end.
To get the light of
fear out of her
internally bleeding eyes.
Let her be infinite
like she used to be
in my mind.
I want
my mother.