something else

In my sleeping, I see mom. We're in a room in an old house where the light fragments everything. She won't stay in time. I am trying to see her. We talk. I remember she begins scatting. I forgot how much you liked to play with language, I tell her. And it occurs to me with immediate and undeniable certainty, you had a good life. She moves into the shadow and I stay still, still, striving to see so hard my eyes open to a white wall in Poughkeepsie. The houses that you can take apart and drive on trucks. I am east of the Mississippi, east by months.

What does it mean to have a good life?

I think my mom was disappointed by a lot of things. She didn't write the plays that she wanted to write. Or have the career and recognition she wanted to have. She fought cancer for 17 years. She fought with my dad. She fought with her self. I wouldn't say she was happy. Not often happy. If a good life doesn't depend on happiness, what makes a life good?

I read books when I can't sleep. I am rereading Roethke.

Loved heart, what can I say?
When I was a lark, I sang;
When I was a worm, I devoured.

It doesn't seem like enough - to be functional. Enough to live for. Let alone the materials of a good life. To achieve desires. Not enough. In the room with dark 70s wood and the glassless window pane or over by the light on the wood table my age. I forgot how much you liked to play.

emilybemily annabanana ba ba ba baba
T. mom
re mind me the free of sound beat pulse beat played a beat played and silence
I play tentatively with the memories I dream of you - perhaps I am talking to my own dead self - the space in me where you live now - I dream myself life beyond failure - to love past reason. I dream myself shag carpeting and a rose cushioned bench seat, dark wood. I dream you close, close to me and scatting. I dream that death in me likes to play with language. I dream judgment. Mercy, mercy.

What makes a life good?
I dream I am blind with searching.
Or perhaps blindness is apt. Space for being seen.
Or perhaps if the land of the dead were a basement room out of time in a 70s deco house and if I could go there, I would give you this...I love. I love your life. I don't get it. I love past owning.