ONE STORY

ONE

I always wanted to forget you. For a long time I reasoned with myself that you were a dream, and in this dream you were a bear. Over protective and unthinking, you gripped me like a grizzly. For the many lightyears I lived in this dream, you were my mother and  when you held me I felt your hands. I would awaken and imagine you smiling, a row of teeth littered black with the residue of chewing tobacco hidden beneath your lip. “Git up” you would say and spit would bubble at the corners of lips. You would grab me like a grizzly, taking me on your travels through the forest that I later learned to call the “market”. This is the only memory of you I cannot let slip from my mind.

 It took me only two years to discover your animal instincts and three too discover mine; ten for me to tie together the problems I inherited from you, and twelve for you too finally forsake me. Later I learned how to leave you behind, however you made me realize how trivial we really were.

I see you here today on this wall, holding me as if we were finally humans. “Look how much we are the same mother, maybe we were never monsters after all,” she stares back at me because we both know the truth.

Blurred between the boundaries, is the micro memories of us misplaced in the part of my brain designed to forget. Then she reappears in the form of a mammal. I scream mother and we both smile.

Story by Taylor Wilson