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a space for youth writing on mental health & identity
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a space for youth writing on mental health & identity
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![]() Every time I call Mother, I envision flashes of the garbage bag she wears tied around her neck, how it crinkles each time she brushes against the floors of Langone. She tries to catch a wink of sleep each night. She says it is her duty
to help her patients, to serve. No matter how much I beg her to be selfish, just this once, she always says: They need me. Yeri, stay inside with your father. Stay inside. One night, I throw my phone at a porcelain vase in the kitchen. As the porcelain blossoms, still it reflects her face, the creases from her goggles scattered in the shards across the marble. Sometimes, she talks about her patients. One night, she says a woman is bedridden, white as paper, at peace. I couldn’t count the IVs, Mother says, but she is in good care. She will get better. I slept well that night. Of her complexion, Mother says it gets better and better, until the pink is back in her lips, the shine returns to her grayed hair. Of their interlocked hands, Mother’s soft hands—she says they are the same ones that pressed into my forehead when, as a child, I was sick. I have the urge to break them apart in memory, to tell Mother to stay inside, to help me try to piece together that broken vase. Comments are closed.
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November 2023
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