Mother...................................................................Evan Vosburgh

Evan Vosburgh

Mother

You left the upstairs door broken. The lock was faulty and the wood surrounding its handle was deformed after he had kicked it down. You never replaced the window in his room, its glass punched through by acorns he had hit at the house one fall. Blackened streaks across the ceiling over the stairs to your basement were never washed or cleaned. The stairs going to your second floor were also tainted; he had punctured the dry wall, and had covered it with scotch tape, camouflaged in color pencil. These you left untouched. They were his faults, merely physical, and easily repaired, yet you watched as he never made any effort to mend them. You witnessed selfishness so severe that it had become unconscious of its own actions. You thought that in his mindset, he never did these things, nor had any care to fix them. And you were right. Your rules and boundaries had failed to put a halt to his omnipotent ideology, to him, he was never wrong and you were never right. Your influence on him had become polarized; like a magnet, you would point east and in turn, he would point west. You saw that it was almost completely impossible for communication, and when there were no efforts made by either you or him to do so, conflict arose. How frustrated you were! It upset him greatly to see you like that, but he wouldn’t sacrifice his freedom. Oh no, that’s far too much for you to ask of him. Frustration had the best of you and your first born was unwinding your last thread of patience. And you wanted it to stop; you wanted him to listen. So you threw. It didn’t matter what you threw, almost any object can become a projectile in your hands. You weren’t picky, because

(pwä-’tĕm) you didn’t have much time, he usually didn’t stick around to find out what you had chosen. Newspapers were your favorite, and movie rentals were very effective, but not necessarily easy to find. The diversity of objects you threw astounded him, you were not discriminatory in your projectiles. Your throws would usually fall short, or sway wide of him. Maybe deep down, you really didn’t want to hurt him. Maybe you just had terrible aim. But the few times when you did land a hit, it resulted in the same effect as a miss. He would smile, and you would initially think that it was smug, a smile asking for another throw, but you saw that wasn’t the case. You saw that his smile was something else, something puzzling and odd. To you, it was reverent, and somehow, contagious. He would later tell you, that to him, you were always throwing. You tossed obnoxious toys down stairs, chucked shoes and dirty clothes into his already overpopulated room, and catapulted the family’s overweight cat through the front door. You pelted recyclables into their respective bins. You heaved backpacks and camping supplies and propelled textbooks and papers into his desk while you made an effort to clean. You cast your rolling eyes upon his own on numerous occasions, pitched away countless amounts of your freedom to be with him, and speared him with your affection. He told you that to him, you never threw out of malice, to harm and cause injury. And you feel that he is right for once. You threw because you loved him too much to see him do any wrong, to become someone you knew he didn’t want to become, to grow spiteful and bitter. When you threw, he smiled.