Zork Journal
The old woman arrives first, not as mother, more as the face memory has made too complete. White hair, clear eyes, everything gathered into one frontal look. I resist it. She was never only that stillness.
Then the strange terrain cuts in: folds, green, grey, a round mass pressing through it, too large to belong to the room. That is closer. My mother as weather around objects. Blankets pulled up. Shopping bags. A coat over a chair. Something always half-covered, half-kept.
The bowed men disturb me because I recognize the gesture before I know what it belongs to. Not submission. The small forward bend of listening to someone older, or ill, or simply difficult to hear. I remember leaning toward her. She had started speaking more quietly by then. Sometimes I pretended I had heard because asking again felt cruel.
The red room brings the dog. That changes everything. Suddenly I remember her with animals, how quickly the severity disappeared. Her hand becoming simple. No history in it. Stroke, pause, stroke. I can almost hear the little sound she used to make without knowing she made it.
And the standing figure beside the bed — that is where I stop. I don’t know whether it is me, her, somebody waiting. It keeps changing.
The score won’t let me keep her as the final face. Good. It gives me the folds, the bent necks, the bed, the dark animal, the ridiculous green hill, the enormous sphere almost rolling out of place.
She becomes difficult again.
Alive enough to remember.