I look in the mirror—see her face in mine.

My mom, Diana, has been told by several different health care professionals that the sores behind her right knee and the ones on her left arm are insect bites, but these burning and itchy wounds aren’t healing. And now there are new areas of inflammation. And it’s been two months. Yesterday, a dermatologist took biopsies. I called a dear friend, A., who’s a medical researcher. She mentioned melanoma and that there are many effective treatments available.

Tropical Storm Ida advances. The wind woke me up earlier than usual and with the sensation of free fall in the pit of my stomach, and I’m weeping as I wash yesterday’s dishes. Last night I texted B., and I just received her response, “Found out that I have a bone spur and plantar fasciitis and a bad sinus infection that requires antibiotics—but I will do anything for you friend!” B. invites me over for dinner.

Mom said that when I was a toddler she would watch Dark Shadows and I would hum along to the theme song. I hadn’t even learned to talk. I listen to it now, saddened that it doesn’t sound familiar, afraid to ask her if she remembers it. I write, “Why does poetry so often relate to the loss of something or the threat of it when we actually have something?” in my journal.

I wake up early again and see water stains on the living room ceiling, thinking about Mom’s seeping ears. She washes her bedding every morning. I recall that during our RV trip earlier this summer she kept checking, washing, and talking about her skin.

She is losing nouns, so she uses other related, or unrelated, words as substitutes. I write, “The choice of nouns in poems is vital—they need to mean something specific, even if inconsequential, for the higher purpose of (possible?) reception.”

Mom called earlier because she was excited by her local TV station’s special programming about fallen tree leaves, so I watched it online. The host indicates that in the state of New Hampshire the milkweed population, a primary food source for monarch butterflies, is significantly down. But Mom said it was pea-pods. She also said, “I had macaroni and cheese and broccoli for dinner, but I can’t make it again. The steam from the pasta hurt my skin.”

I write, “One word at a time—from title to last word, a building, which, at times, also unbuilds. It is not about whether a poem is at a given moment contemplating, deconstructing, negating, or building, but rather how effectively these actions are being accomplished.”

I was on public transportation in the dream, first a bus and then the subway. The riders weren’t wearing masks. I couldn’t determine the right platform and kept needing to backtrack and switch lines, and then realized I had left my backpack on one of the trains.

We had been checking in almost every day since the start of the pandemic, and most nights we would watch TV episodes on Zoom together, her favorites—Firefly Lane, The Ranch, and Virgin River—but I would watch anyway. We haven’t watched much lately because she’s too tired by the time we meet, and besides she said, “My skin hurts too much against surfaces, so I need to stand.”

C. and I had spent hours with the same poems in Provincetown, allegedly nicknamed Helltown by someone at sea, well before the ‘80’s AIDS years. I admired scrub pines and the dunes from her passenger’s seat. C. is a good talker. The more words she spoke the slower she drove. Mom used to be a good talker, but since COVID she doesn’t have much to say.

As we played cribbage inside the RV, the campfire smoke filtered in through the screen door.

On the last full day of our trip, a couple of towns over from where she lives, we joined the queue outside an ice cream parlor after her doctor’s visit. The doctor told her to stop using the antibiotic and steroid creams. I ordered a small cup of maple-walnut, a flavor I recall being reserved for adults, like rum-raisin.

Mom texts, “I had a great night’s sleep last night and my ears didn’t seep. There was just one small spot on the pillow.” I say to myself, “So an ear did seep then” and feel bad for thinking it.

I write, “How does tone fluctuate? How does the poem move syntactically and change from sentence to sentence? What is its music? Is there variation? Are there interruptions? What does this noticing add up to? What does one notice about their own noticing?”

I watch a young man limp outside my window as I drink some English Breakfast tea and recall pretend-limping as an adolescent for attention.

When did my father first sense that I was gay? The photographs may indicate five or six years old— I’d gained weight and was no longer smiling when his behavior toward me changed, when he started to rage and then ignore me—the betrayal I am still trying to free myself from. This is also when I started spending much more time in my bedroom.

I met D. on the street, E.’s ex. D.’s moving two towns over. I called E. to say, “D’s moving because of gentrification!”, but no one picks up calls anymore. These days most friends text, but this is how I see the communication hierarchy:

“How are you doing?” reads differently and has a different impact with each of these methods. Don’t get me wrong—it is nice to hear from folks.

It was as if I had never heard a song before when I heard “Do You Really Want To Hurt Me” for the first time. This morning I put it on repeat, trying to access what I felt on Sunday, January 16, 1983 in Conway, New Hampshire, a day not unlike others, when sunlight was barely able to penetrate plastic-covered bedroom windows. Before I had even seen Boy George’s unabashed androgyny, Casey Kasem was introducing me to Culture Club on American Top 40.

Men hadn’t shown interest in me for quite some time—until this week. Is it because I’m feeling vulnerable, letting my guard down? The one I’m attracted to shares my name, and I notice now that he’s D’s friend on Facebook.

Mom texts: “Immune disorder. Need lab work, prednisone, and special vitamins. Blood work is not for Melanoma. I misunderstood the nurse the other day…”

“Can I FaceTime you?”

“Yes!”

She reads “autoimmune disorder” from her notes, spells out b-u-l-l-o-u-s-p-e-m-p-h-i-g-o-i-d, tells me they tested for it, tells me the prescribed vitamins are for neurological health and that she needs to take prednisone orally for a month. Tells me that she’s upset that she won’t be able to play dominoes or cards with F. and G., and that they don’t do virtual.

“Mom, on a scale of zero to ten, zero being lonely, how lonely are you?”

“I hate it when doctors use this scale.”

“Are you lonely then, Mom?”

“You left a pen with black ink behind. I made a chart for all of my pills, including the ones I was already taking. I’m using your pen to check them off once I’ve taken them.”

She was a young mother. I was young and learned that men and sexual relationships were bad. He would say something hateful, storm out of the house, get behind the wheel, and burn rubber as a fuck you as he left us. I write, “Enjambment allows one to isolate language from different sentences to a line, thus creating subtext which can subvert or enhance syntactical meaning.”

There will be a time when either I exist without her, or her without me, though this thought usually only happens when I’m washing the dishes.

Mom calls to say that the Bullous pemphigoid biopsy came back negative. The doctor isn’t even sure if she has an autoimmune disorder, but the biopsy for the rash is forthcoming. Mom wonders if hydrochlorothiazide is the cause: “I’ve been taking 25 milligrams for 15 years.” I mention health care proxies again, but the only response is a snap from a dried garbanzo bean among others soaking in a pot of water on my stove.

I write, “There is always a beginning before the beginning in a poem and an end after the end.”

Mom texts a pic. “Finally! My first bloomed sunflower!”

I love to see her laugh. We’ve been watching Will & Grace from season 1, episode 1. Jack is her favorite character, but she can’t recall his name, “His name is Jack, Mom.” Will she forget mine? The word mine has these two definitions—a thing belonging to or associated with a speaker, or a type of bomb placed on or just below a surface.

Karen uses the word “Boink” in relation to what she is going to do to her husband. Mom asks, “What does that mean?” “It’s a comical way to say having sex, Mom.” She says, “There are so many words. How do you know so many words?” as she turns on a flashlight and I pause Hulu. “Mom, what’s the matter?” She answers, “My skin is itchy in a new spot and I wanted to see it.”

She texts: “I lost my sunflowers to the frost. And there are mice in the bottom kitchen drawer. We put down glue traps and bounce dryer sheets in the drawer.”

“Do you need to use both? Don’t they cancel each other out?”

“Oh, you’re right. I’m so stupid.”

“No, Mom, you aren’t stupid.”

“I’m so stupid.”

“No, you aren’t. You just want them gone.”

The skin eruptions returned. She’s lost 20 pounds, and after the appointment with her primary care physician, she called the office from home and spoke with the nurse practitioner. She forgot to ask about Paxil.

We can’t hear each other on FaceTime. I text, “Try rebooting,” but she can’t remember where the off button is. She returns with sound and is irritable. Her landline rings, “I need to see if this is a fake call.” It’s her sister and I tell her to take the call.

I write, “I think the origins of my writing relate to a need to frame my narrative? Perhaps because there was a time when I let my family frame that narrative for me? I must consider the poem for its own sake—which may or may not agree with my needs or the needs of readers. The poem must exist on its own, and sometimes without a trace of its origin.”

It’s cold. I used to tease her because she would cover up her cold neck. And now I do the same thing.