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Please Stop Screaming or: A Profile of My Mother 

Anonymous

Here is how this is going to go. 

As I prop myself up in bed, there you sit in that big fabric chair across the room, crossing your legs and gazing at the mirror on the wall. 

 

I’ve never quite liked that chair. A coarse beige, its fabric is tightly fashioned with a temperamental texture. Easy at first to slide into and soothing to the seat, it lulls one into a warm decompression, cushioning the legs and pillowing the back. Softly. Gently. 

 

Until it spits up a feather and pricks you with a pain in the ass. 

Kind of like you. 

 

Behind silken strands of an artificial blond is your face. 

The aged visage of the American 55-year-old. 

 

Within your eyes of hazel hide, in this specific order:

Windmills, monkey bars, backseat hookups, a cubicle, marriage, divorce, checks for $500 to have the locks to the house changed, acupuncture, drives to school in a Lexus SUV, rental homes, marriage again, a couple of mojitos, and a small box of daily supplements for Vitamins A, C, D, and iron. 

 

Their gaze remains constant as you offer me your hand so we may dance through this minefield of disappointments, regrets, and lies, all lying still as stones, waiting for you to turn them over. 

 

Waiting, until now. 

 

There, unearthed, like a skull emerging from the mud, is my honest truth. Brought into the light from beneath the sickly soil, it opens wide a gaping maw that swallows us both and with us, everything you wanted me to be.

 

Every date, every valentine, every suave suit jacket, every heartbreak, every grandchild. Nevermind the fact that I still like some girls. To you, this is death. 

 

So naturally, you explode. 

 

From atop a chin marked still with aging scars billows the hysteria of the suburban mother. 

 

How could things have gone so wrong?

 

But please- please don’t make this harder than it has to be. 

I thought you wanted me to be honest. 

I thought you wanted this. But more importantly,

I thought I could trust you to not make me feel like shit in a situation like this. 

I- please. 

 

Please stop screaming. 

Please stop screaming. 

Please stop screaming. 

Please-

 

So yeah, I think that’s about how coming out to you will go. 

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