Devon Fulford
the first year

for the first year, mama never stops crying.

or perhaps she does—it seems everyone’s tears abate at some point—but every time you see mama, she’s in tears for most of the visit. sometimes, you just want your old mama back and the thought is nearly palpable with the memory-scent of her gingerbread cookies and fluffy bath towel affection. you want her relentless humming around her small, warm home, fingernails packed with clay as she worked on one of a million projects she’d never finish (though you all know with the right agent, she’d be making millions). she still offers endless beverage refills and snacks when you see her, but her ghost shape flickers now before you—her temporality displacing the mom-friend you’d grown to covet. you’re the adult now: the one to dry the tears, make promises that are the baldest of lies, fill in shoes that don’t quite fit right, so you’ll wind up with blisters later and she won’t be the one offering homemade herbal poultices to alleviate the sting.

you’re the mom now.

you were the mom that final day in court, too. casey and mama both found themselves awash in shudder-sadness and unable to perform in front of the judge and bailiffs and swivel-necked spectators of doom observance on both sides of the proverbial aisle. you didn’t blame them, of course, and frankly you were not even terribly surprised: you’ve long held the role of glue—a viscous compliance matron assuaging sads, moving back to colorado from the austin, texas respite, visiting your brother through the smeared monitors in the country jail every week or so to ensure he knew you were all out here, listening, waiting, while he was inside, listening, waiting. you were already donning your mourning shrouds of misery in what should we have dones and we should have knowns but you never wore those outfits on the days you went to visit him in jail.

in that first year, the months passed and all too quickly the busy birds stop inviting you for coffee to peruse your most personal aches and pick at your brain with their sharp, curious little teeth. they came out in flocks, at first, preening with apologies, gluttonous for the gory particulars that only you, the insider, could offer. pain vultures will always find the suffering; their highly tuned olfactory sense whiffs blood across decades of separation and when they try on their rental costumes of old friends or high school buddies you’re rife with ache for anyone offering consolatory gestures and willingly offer your most raw confidences, never thinking past tomorrow and that these birds of game will just as quickly flutter off once they’ve dined on their glut of your misery.

a few of these predators linger in the courtroom that day, though by that time, most had flown south for fresher meats.

that final day in court you agreed to speak on behalf of your brother’s graces. the near-whispered profession breathed of trembling tonsils across a bloated tongue seized in grief, you crooned his praises—the kindness he showed strangers, the babies for which he’d long pined, his occasional though memorable acts of grandiose generosity—but the voice emitted was not your own. it became your mom voice: a sound of soothing even through a warble of unshed emotions, a slow river dumping cool and calm amidst the heaving storm threatening twister landfall in your guts menacing to burst forth in a less affable form all over the lectern on which rested your letter, casey’s letter, and the final chance to let the public know that your brother was not a monster nor a waste—he was a flawed, terrible, tragic human.

and for the first year, mama never stops crying.