Partings (March 26, 2009. New Moon. Issue 2)

The smell of oatmeal transports me across time and continents and I am returned to my mother’s kitchen. The room is dim and cold. Mother’s ghost is standing, stirring the bubbling porridge.

“I’m sorry,” I say, surprising myself.

She cants her head, and holds me in a cool stare. “I never got over you upping and leaving like that.”

My guilt flares, combusting within and whooshing out, its blinding white light obliterating the scene.

I’m thrown deeper into the past. Mother and I are in the airport. I’m leaving for the other side of the world, never again to live with her or in the country of my birth. She’s crying silver threads of tears that seem to have no beginning or end. Her chin trembles, the pain so visible on her face it’s like looking inside her. It’s amputation.

I’m back in my kitchen, baking cookies with my two daughters. The room is too hot, from the oven and the sun pressing through the windows, but we don’t care. The heat heightens the smells of raisins, chocolate, and melted margarine, all mingling with the oatmeal, and before the treats are ever baked we can already taste them.

My daughters tell me again how they will live in this house with me forever. They’re still young, and don’t know any better, and for now I let them believe. I could protect myself, and love them less, but it’s too late for that. I held nothing back, risked every point of longitude and latitude that is me, and promise myself I will never regret it.