Your Mother Asks If You’re Seeing Anyone and No Longer Means a Therapist

Abstract

Your Mother Asks If You’re Seeing Anyone and No Longer Means a Therapist Cindy King (bio) It’s tough to find a cardiologist who datespatients from the Ward of Cracked Hearts, butthere’s always the bariatric surgeonwho thinks you could drop a few pounds. If it’s too latefor the death row inmate, try the child predator; you toocould date the would-be senator, or even the President of the United States.If you can’t have the priest, don’t give up.You too could fall for the charismatic cult leader. You toocould try the celibate polygamist. Admittedly,you’d have to share, and you wouldn’t know for sureif you’re actually dating, or whether you’d ever “consummate,”but who’s in it for that kind of thing anyway, unless,of course, you’d finally give me a grandchild.You didn’t spend years in braces only to settlefor a dental assistant, did you?We didn’t correct your overbite just so you could eatyour dinners alone. It took sacrifice to cultivate your eligibility, yearsof home perms and hand-me-downs, decades of clearance rack cosmetics.And yet the people you called friends were privilegedenough to discover your brain and not your body. BTW, didyou see that profile pic of the head floating in a jar?Though I’m not sure if it’s really enough to love.But love you will as everyone doestoward infinite grace, the axe [End Page 168] into the olive branch, verisimilitudeto abstraction, even the sarcophagus toward mummy dust,the intellect to its dementia. And I will support you as the mantleabove the fireplace supports the little box, houseto your spouse’s ashes. [End Page 169] Cindy King Cindy King’s work has appeared in the Sun, Callaloo, Crab Orchard Review, River Styx, Black Warrior, and elsewhere. She is the author of the chapbook Easy Street (Dancing Girl Press), and Zoonotic, forthcoming from Tinderbox Editions. She is an assistant professor of creative writing at Dixie State University. Copyright © 2019 University of Nebraska Press