Ducks, Newburyport

by Lucy Ellmann

the fact that in some ways having your whole family disappear must be an adolescent’s dream come true, I mean not violently taken away or anything, or suddenly wiped out in a car crash or something, but like if they could all just conveniently dissolve into the background, the fact that isn’t that what teens are always wishing for, the good luck of a nice peaceful orphanhood, urchins, golden light, the Silent Treatment, DNR, sea star wasting disease, the fact that isn’t that why she complains about every darned thing I do, or she used to anyway, before she became our protector, the fact that she was still coming out with veiled threats about running away again, the fact that this is what I wonder about sometimes, when I can’t sleep, 3:33, whether she would have preferred me to vanish, mom, bomb, tomb, womb, but again and again I decide it wouldn’t be good for her if we’d all passed on in such a terrible way, or even just me, the fact that I don’t think people survive a thing like that intact, the loss of your mom or your entire family before your eyes, the fact that she might be free of us and all, free to do her own thing without interference, but she’d never be a whole person again, just like I was never a whole person after Mommy got sick, and that didn’t even involve violence, unless you count the neurosurgeon’s klutziness,