my mother asleep
My Mother Asleep
words and photo by lindsey cristofani
I woke up because the heater hurled on at 6:ooam or so in the Santa Cruz Inn in Riverside, Ca. My mother facing me in her sleep on her side in the black and white morning light. Lips very slightly parted and erotically relaxed like they never are when she’s conscious. Not talking, glancing around, sucking her veneers.
I feel like I could finally really reach you if I took my hand out from in between my legs. The line of your cheek bone sheer and shapely. I want to caress it and tell you that you look like me. And that you’re beautiful. Take your face in my hands and kiss you there on that cheekbone of mine and let you feel my love.
But, I didn’t want to hear you speak.
You will be responding too quickly soon enough.
With lips ‘erotically relaxed’ and ‘took my hand out from in between my legs’ some might get the hee-bee gee-bees (listening to the Bee Gees)since the author is talking about her own mother. It would be easy to take it at face value…but I have to believe that’s not the case here. I mean, we’re talking early morning “not-awake-quite-yet” time, still in the dream state where we make uncanny observances of beauty that might not make total sense. The real world might say to this: “eww, lesbo milf action”, but I think it’s just an oddball daughter’s love for her mother. The piece kinda centers on that sexually charged lines, though. It makes a difference. I think that’s part of the point. Maybe I’m off on this. …or politically incorrect again. who knows. …only the shadows…
…as all good writing should. That Cristofani can disturb a reader in that few lines is awesome. This isn’t sensational, either–it’s fraught. And the move from first to 2nd person is great to remind us of being voyeurs, which we are, every time we read.