My mom always told me I could be a writer, but she never taught me to stand up for myself.
She always told me I had to go to college, but she never explained the difference between love and sex.
I can’t count the number of times she yelled that I had no common sense, but she never asked about my homework.
She mastered the art of a guilt trip, but could never quite figure out how to ask me how my day was.
Sometimes when I sing out loud, her voice comes out. It’s one of the few things from my past that comforts me. To young ears she sang like an angel. I loved hearing her sing.
Now sometimes when I sing out loud, I hear her voice, like picking up scraps of my past, picking through the detritus left on the ground, piece by piece, and choosing which parts to shovel into the trash. I want to save the gems among the garbage. There are so few.
Sometimes I sing out loud just to go back for a while.
It’s like my life is fragmented, and none of it actually goes together.
Sweet, simple life, a momma and her little girl
Then him and him and her made three and there was no room for a fourth
Then man after man, each face reminding me in a flash of someone else’s life
And now married with my own family and no connection to the sweet, simple life that her momma tried so hard to give her. Just a tune sung in the kitchen among the dirty dishes.
Like scraps of paper
Like pieces of confetti, chaotic and colorful and crinkly and wild
I want to put this piece of my life in the fiction section.
Author: Chandi Gilbert
Email: [email protected]
Author Bio: Chandi is a published author and freelance writer for hire from Ohio. She writes about all the dark, twisted things that hover in the back of your mind. She could make a living as a professional reality TV watcher, but for now, she is feeding her weird little heart by letting it spill out into the public.
Link to social media or website: http://ieatthewolf.com/
