Her mother was thinner than memory allowed. She sat in a recliner under a crocheted blanket, even though it was July. Her hands were bird-bones wrapped in skin.
Linda folded the photograph into her pocket. She stood up. bitter in the mouth pdf
Her mother closed her eyes. “Because I was a coward,” she said. The word coward tasted like nothing. That was the strangest thing. After all these years, after all the bitterness— coward had no taste at all. Empty. Hollow. Like the space where a tooth used to be. Her mother was thinner than memory allowed
The bitter ones were the worst. Forgive tasted like crushed aspirin. Return like dandelion stem. Mother like burnt toast scraped black. Linda folded the photograph into her pocket
But burnt toast, she realized, was still toast. And someone had made it for her, once, a long time ago, in a kitchen that smelled like rain and cigarettes and the fierce, flawed love of a woman who didn’t know how to say I’m sorry except by telling the truth when it was almost too late.