FROM, ELIAS

All I could remember, when I met your mom,

was how you told me she went limp in the winter

like a car with a frozen engine. 

Her eyes were hollowed, thin

lips the pink of peonies. Her face moved like rubber

when she talked, but I was more disturbed by her scleras:

blood beads bulging out of the wax. Your voice broke

when you muttered she tried to kill herself, throwing you
 
and T and A off her ship while she capsized and left them

to raise you. How she sunk deeper and deeper

until she needed that metal tube, a gift from Edison or Bacon

or maybe Ra to fill her sagging cheeks with light.

And as much as it was no secret

that she never liked me, when I think back

to when I met your mom, 

all I can recall is her fish eyes

and how I stared back from the black.