—Billy Collins, “Silence”
I had been laughing at my mother, and she did not like
being laughed at, especially by a son who saw his father
stealing the plates from her Olds on his way out the door
as cause for sniggering. The problem was, I couldn’t stop.
Tides of out-of-body delight kept bubbling up. Breaking.
Until she left the room. Returned having rescued a belt
he had abandoned in his rush to be done with us.
We were in the kitchen. And I remember backing up
to the refrigerator. Begging for mercy. Forgiveness.
Her voice rose and fell as she tracked me to strike.
My legs-arms-back burned. The palm of one hand.
I had never been so utterly shamed. So humiliated.
I’d pissed myself, I saw after as she jerked me up
from a black tile floor saying, Laugh some more.
Maybe I have no call to show her in that light.
We had a lithograph of The Blue Boy on a wall.
The den had a gray sectional sofa. A color TV.
In the kitchen cabinet were Oreos. Pop-Tarts.
Outside, an Olds that wasn’t going anywhere.
Don’t act as if you haven’t seen such houses.
Haven’t lived on an analogous street where
mothers enacted similar torments. Fifty years
have ticked by. And I recall sliding down
the side of our Westinghouse refrigerator,
a boy-cheek compelled to the cool metal
as I asked to be permitted to live a while.
How could I know she wouldn’t kill me?
Hadn’t I just witnessed the end of love?