It’s Saturday night.
My father is in the basement, site of his office that contains my bed, watching political coverage.
My mother is in the living room. She was sleeping and I was watching the Lifetime movie on Coco Chanel, but she woke and without speaking to me changed the channel.
I could go to her room upstairs, the second bedroom, and watch if I cared, in relative discomfort.
What I really want to do is to have a rum & coke and chill out.
But I have to be up at midnight to roll my mother to the toilet. Last night I pushed until after 11:30 PM and she decided she wasn’t going to go. She couldn’t decide that at 10 PM, though.
I walked around the block and heard a child wail “But you can’t talk to me that way!” That kid is going to lose.
My father is nattering about politics as I try to write, and I just walk and slam my head in the darkness, making the walls real and visible, the walls that stress and bang and bruise me. I am the torsion spring, twisted beyond reason to take up the ignorance of those around me.
I want a drink and a chill, to even have the space to think about changing and going to church tomorrow.
But it’s just more work, more work, more work.
