Headstone
The text was three words:
Your mom passed.
My fifteen minute break.
Break like: my last baby tooth hits cement.
And then I was
back on the sales floor
where everything was plastic-wrapped perfection
where I did my best have-a-great-day smiling
impression of myself.
My coworker said they’d just gotten the worst text.
I wanted to say I bet I can top it, but I folded the tissue
paper behind the register, instead. Buried it.
And you might think that I wanted to go home,
but I wanted to stay tucked into the name tag
that was holding me together.
And then I was
outside.
It isn’t beautiful and poetic to tell you it was raining—
it just was. The rain pours in Seattle no matter how you feel.
I said the impossible words into my phone
The my and the mom and the died
And my spouse came to me.
And then I was
at a restaurant.
I bought us dinner. I bought us drinks.
I spent every minimum-wage dollar I had
and bought every appetizer on the menu
and too much dessert. A mudslide.
A warm apple pie a la mode,
the all-American mother ice cream dream.
I wanted to say, your mom only dies once
to the waiter but I didn’t feel like seeing him hurt for me
so I just said it to the person who loves me most.
And then I was
home.
And the grief only sat beside me, waiting.
I thought it might leave me in the night
like I might wake up
and it would just be another day.
I’d gone two years without hearing her voice
so it wouldn’t be any different.
And then I was
awake
and it was
cement.
*
Every Other Tuesday
Therapy begins at the same time as it always does
this morning, and it’s not the first time my voice
is all stone truth: “I think I might be cursed.”
My licensed therapist who is also secretly a witch
sees the light in my eyes flicker, and their hair stands on end.
They say, “that’s a sign that there’s truth there.”
This is how it works, therapy: I hand them a tangle
made of all my smallest pieces, they point to it
and say, “what a mess.”
Sometimes, this is enough magic to feel
a little bit like sanity— just being told
I’m not imagining it all.
*
Callie Little (she/they) is an artist and author from the Pacific Northwest. Her writing has appeared in VICE, Harper’s BAZAAR, Architectural Digest, and many more fine publications. Her debut non-fiction book, Every Little Thing You Do Is Magic, and its coordinating tarot deck featuring her illustrations will be published by Clarkson Potter in August 2024.
I wonder about the use of the word cement here. It seems it might be confused with the word concrete as so many people do confuse the two, although cement is certainly a nice word to end on.