Mothers day dinner

I sat across from her the whole time, aware that she wanted to be somebody else. In eyes shifting from laughing daughter to another, I see where I get my desperation. It hurts to think how long she has lived desperate. On outskirts, struggling to discern the shapes of people, or the way they fit together. Despairing at her own shapelessness. She took a bathroom break and her face was red when she returned. I don’t know if she left to have a moment with herself, but I worry she did.

I didn’t console her. I wandered from her desperation, uncomfortable with the mirror I would have to confront in her eyes. I picture her driving home now, overfull with shapelessness and spilling from the eyes. She drives home to a house vacant of all the love she tried to make plain. Glimmers of struggling but meaningful days rest on the mantle in the living room. Mementos, teasing her for being without that she loves.

Is this what it is to miss her? To picture her in quiet despair because of you? To lose yourself in thought rather than take her gaze? Do I miss the woman sitting there, red in the face from the quieting of her desperation? Do I miss the boy who would have consoled her?