After my father would joust his head in,
\nlet his temple\u2019s cattle-scented sweat puddle
\nbetween the empty stacks of ice trays,
\nlet the patchy savannah of his scalp imagine
\na snowstorm in December, a black blizzard
\nbarricaded in the back of our freezer, my mother,
\nhunched like Quasimodo in a nightgown,
\nwould loudly stuff a pack of wine coolers in,
\nwould make it known that she was carving out
\nher time to relax, that as soon as the glass
\nand gold aluminum foil cooled to the point
\nthat it burned her hands, she\u2019d begin her dance
\nto the kitchen table, spread the bottles out
\nlike a line of pawns, and one by one, erase
\nthe evening heat that would weigh her body down,
\nthe thirst she knew would soon return
\nas a stronger thirst the next morning. <\/p>\n
Unlike my father though, who\u2019d dress
\nhis discretion in a paper bag or koozie,
\nshe\u2019d ebb between the low and loud of a weekend
\nbar, would one moment embody the tucked away
\ntable still flirting with their pints of silence,
\nand the next be the jukebox hogger, the woman
\nstanding from her seat, unafraid to request
\nanother song, to solo that one about love,
\nor the one she couldn\u2019t help but relate
\nto the monotony of a stay-at-home mom;
\na plight disguised with the melody playing
\ninside her head, as she\u2019d mumble a few lyrics
\nin Spanish, echo the childhood tunes of a happier
\nMexico, and spin in circles the way my father
\nused to spin with her, lock their hips together,
\nand blur across the living room\u2019s torn
\nlinoleum floor. <\/p>\n
But standing at the doorway, perhaps picturing
\na hypothetical of himself, the potential scenarios
\nof his own habits infused with impulse,
\nmy father would simply step outside, pace
\nthe porch and like a man down to his last pack
\nof cigarettes, inhale the night\u2019s firefly-filled air,
\nwhile I, seated across my mother, would watch
\nthe bottles\u2019 condensation bleed onto my scattered
\npapers, the stack of homework she\u2019d help me with,
\nthe written and rewritten sentences discolored
\nby the growing rivulets, until it no longer resembled
\nEnglish, but a language of wet graphite, a dialect
\nof wrinkled curves her own voice began to mirror,
\nas she\u2019d lean over, belch a strawberry-sweet burp
\nabove us, and pause as if about to apologize
\nfor the embarrassment she thought I felt,
\nfor the quiet empathy I could never mask
\nto my expressions, because my sense
\nof vicariousness always placed her somewhere else:
\na larger, ageless room where the bartender
\nwould only joke about last calls, and she\u2019d chug
\nanother round of on-the-house laughter, a gulp
\nof relief only her smile could distill. <\/p>\n
After my father would joust his head in, let his temple\u2019s cattle-scented sweat puddle between the empty stacks of ice trays, let the patchy savannah of his scalp imagine a snowstorm in December, a black blizzard barricaded in the back of our freezer, my mother, hunched like Quasimodo in a nightgown, would loudly stuff a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":22,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false},"categories":[12],"tags":[25],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6Jypy-245","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7941"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/22"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7941"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7941\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10216,"href":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7941\/revisions\/10216"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7941"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7941"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7941"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}