The Incident || Lisa Thornton

 

by Lisa Thornton

Combing through my memories in the manner of 

that girl’s mother dragging the tool through my matted locks after 

her daughter plunked her chewed gum on the back of my head while I was over at her house playing, slowly pulling the teeth through the peanut butter she’d slathered on 

to loosen the sticky pink wad,

I look for the root of why it is this way now,

the clues to when it all started, how things got to this,

through thousands of individual strands of memory,

patiently, straddling a kitchen chair, working it out.

The moves from one house to the next,

the hushed conversations behind closed doors,

the sighs and pictures that look different now that I’m an adult.

From this new vantage point 

spying details I never noticed-

a hint from slouched shoulders,

a faraway look,

the absence of peace recognizable to another woman’s eye.

Rubbing the strings between my fingers gently

so as not to break them

while I separate the scenes;

the girl standing in the corner,

eyes red.

Why did you do this, her mother scolded

before turning to me, to spend the rest of the afternoon

correcting me, making me the way I had been when I arrived before

sending me back. 

Image Credit: iStock

AUTHOR'S INFORMATION:

Lisa Thornton currently works as a registered nurse at an elementary school. She has spent years listening to people’s stories as a bartender, cocktail waitress and newspaper reporter. She lives in the Midwest where she is patiently waiting on the corn to grow high again. Her poetry has appeared in The Matter Literary Journal and Roi Faineant. You can find her on Twitter @Thorntonforreal.