Mother
In the white hall, she stood, boring through the grease-smudged glass of it—infinite fingerprints making our vision sleep-colored and weak. Oh I love butterflies. Look at how beautiful that one is. From over her shoulder, I follow her finger (pressed against it, bent at the distal, with her purple and white plastic nails tapping glass, hunched-shouldered) to the Lepidoptera collection.
In response, That’s a moth: because I knew; because we have a responsibility to fact; because she knows so little about me, but I wanted her to know I know, that these are a few of the things I know well; ultimately, because I confirmed with the paper-colored object label.
The correction: has less to do with the direct object than principle and self-worth; is an attempt to maintain orientation; keeps myself separate and distant from her so I do not get too close and succumb to her, frying up like a wick; an attempt at individuation (identification).
Thus, the moth: interchangeable, replaceable (place-holder); dusty and low, dusted and immoveable; scapegoat and victim; fear-inducing, threatening, and primal.
The correction: because we know certain things certainly, even if the familiarity is without consequence; because we should not love that which we cannot identify (like this and the way she buys aloe vera plant but calls it eucalyptus); because finding a butterfly in your romaine lettuce is less traumatic; because beauty should not be mistaken for the beautiful.
After twenty-some years in rural Ohio, Wes Jamison moved to Chicago and earned his MFA in Nonfiction from Columbia College. His work appears in Essay Press, The Rumpus, Tupelo Quarterly, and elsewhere. Wes is now a PhD candidate at University of Louisiana at Lafayette.
