A Drive Along the Cliffside

Sitting in our car, I’m waiting for it to drop.

It’s just me and my mother, alone in this metal cart

Driving along the long, flat road from school to home,

With that slip of paper in the back,

Telling and foretelling my failures that came and to come.

She starts it.

She always does.

It’s loud and it hurts my ears

And when I flinch,

There’s a slap of punctuation to refocus,

And then it’s just more screams.

Sometimes I scream too.

Back to her or just to vent,

But I’m usually quiet.

It gets the story finished faster.

This time though,

I return the blow.

This one’s a first.

It’s a softer, quieter than expected, but...

I hit back for the first time.

She looks at the long, flat road after a befuddled glance at me

And it’s quiet after she slaps back,

Two hits to one in her favor.

We were supposed to go to tennis after school,

But it’s raining, so it got cancelled.

Kind of, really wish it didn’t,

But here we are,

Two hits to one and on a cliffside

Driving along the long, flat road from school to home.

She’s breathing as if she’s building up to something,

Just ready to break the silence.

I break it first with a laugh.

I dreamt of this moment, planned it, and now that it’s happening,

All I can do is cackle and crackle

Because this one really wasn’t planned at all.

She hits me again and starts screaming,

How i’m a bad son,

How i  have shamed our ancestors

How the heavens will punish me

And how she’ll kill herself in shame.

But I just laugh harder, glass creeping into my sound

Cackling and crackling,

And when she slaps for me to stop,

I grab her hand and squeeze grammar dead.

And I smile at her.

Softly, kindly, lovingly

And then I talk.

I think that’s a first for this.

I talk, loud or softly, I don’t know, but I talk.

I apologize for my failures, my shame.

I take pride in what I have achieved and I remind her of when things were good.

I thank her for what she’s done, for what she’s given up for me.

I point out her faults and I lay out her actions

And I show the work of this problem between us.

And I show her the tangled threads that bind us.

Because it’s not really about the paper with my grades

It’s not really about the slap back.

It’s not about the heavens or ancestors or anything else,

It’s just about us and how we act on the cliffs of anger.

She ignores it.

She always does this bit, it’s old hat.

She screams that she put me into this world,

She can take me out of it.

This one really isn’t a first,

It's old hat like I said.

She’s screaming promises about how she’ll destroy everything

Raze things, burn things, salt things.

She’s threatening to isolate us from everyone.

Cut things, burn things, bury things.

She’s swerving now, and oh, how she’s swerving

She’s screaming now, and oh, how she’s screaming.

I’m still laughing, and oh, how I’m still laughing.

I slap the roof of the car.

SLAP! SLAP! SLAP!

And I scream nonsense,

I scream gibberish,

I scream pain and rage and memories buried coming up

And I hit everything except her,

Because I still love her.

She’s my mother.

I’m her son.

She still loves me.

I grab her hand,

Soft, kindly, lovingly

I tell her, “We die together then.”

This is the kindest thing I learned to do in anger.

To offer up my life for her.

It’s cracked tangled, fettered, and taped, and glued,

And it’s held together with everything but the soft and kind things,

No puppy dog kisses, no cherries on ice cream sundaes,

Just broken glass and shitty poetic devices and ancestral familial, filial loyalty.

Really though?

It’s just a stubborn refusal to let go.

On both our parts.

And on nights like these, look how broken it is.

And on drives like these, look how painful it is.

And on cliffs like these,

look how far, look how close,

the fall, the end

Can be, could be.

She’s quiet.

And then she’s loud.

It’s a different kind of loud,

A broken pride kind of loud.

She’s begging me to take back what I said.

I don’t.

I shake my head and don’t repeat it.

Softly, kindly, lovingly.

I teetered on the cliffside

And now I’m trying to make it back.

She has her pride, but I have mine

And mine’s just as cracked,

But it’s cracked just like hers.

I’m my mother’s son after all.

Her face schools into a scowl,

But she doesn’t say anything else,

Tightening her grip on the wheel,

She holds on tight to something that isn’t me.

And I like to think that it hurts her.

I hope she realizes what she says matters just as much as what she does.

She’s not very good at handling cliffs.

It’s fine though, I’ve lived with a volcano all my life,

I know how to handle sharp edges and steep drops.

I know what burning’s like and how to treat them.

I can show her how, loudly and softly, and, I hope, kindly.

It’s a Cold War sort of MADness,

I know the routes, the paths this conversation usually takes

And I know the destination always ends with us reconciling,

But I hate this path,

So i’m taking a detour I imagined

And I hope by the ancestors and the heavens, it’s the same destination.

I can’t see victory,

I never could.

But I just wanted something else than this shitty drive on the cliffside.

I feel sad, my chest feels as if it’s a hole,

And I’m falling in my seat, waiting for the splat.

But I’m still smiling despite it all,

So I guess I’m fine with this end.

I’m tired.

Silence lulls for the rest of the drive.

We pull home.

I grab all the bags,

I leave nothing for her to hold.

I’m still a dutiful son, I want to lessen her burdens.

She still finds something else to hold though.

Going in first, she pulls the door open

And holds it open, waiting for someone.

I look at her, she glares at me,

But she’s still holding on, still waiting.

I smile, glass falling out and I’m hoping what’s left is softer.

I walk in and we’re home.

And we’ve both pulled away from the cliffside.

AN: First poem for my english class that I had to discard. Looking back, I see all sorts of flaws, and it's hella rough.

For all that it is though... I like it. Coming up next, the second version of the same story.