Are You Still Dying, Darling?

I gotta admit: I didn't write a damn thing yesterday. I woke up overheated and that became the whole metaphor of my day. Bathed in sweat with morning's first conscious thought, gasping for breath, choking, the air already still and hot and crowded with loud voices. Woke up the computer too. I figured, "Why not?! I'm up", all aggressive and shit. Then called my Mom (such a dumb move). As soon as she picked up, I was sparking flint. It took us all of a minute and a half to get to that familiar yelling over each other. This time, she hung up first. I stood in the middle of the boxing ring in my mind, breathing hard and still fuming, steam and smoke rising from my flabby engine. I just ambushed and dive-bombed her weekend. Another round down, sparring with the woman who gave birth to me. What the hell is wrong with me? Seriously. I called her a selfish bitch because she missed--and made my brother miss--my singular poem at the Man Ray/Lee Miller exhibition out at the Legion, downstairs, under the artwork, Man Ray's handiwork. A special poem, a poem I had written just for the occasion. A poem I delivered in about as long as it took me to attack and overload my own overly-aggressive mother. Piled down on her with vitriol, with bile, pent-up frustration, with my forty-three years of near-constant rejection by and from her. I don't know where it comes from for her, not the true origin. I'm guessing that source will continue to lie hidden, location forgotten, only the stardust and morning mist of that lost ancestor still present, a forgotten shadow of rotting cotton, until she--my mother--herself is gone from here, her body and all the rest lost, gone from everywhere, but my brother's and my own lonely thoughts.