Motherthing

by Ainslie Hogarth

Winter never lets you forget you’re alive. Maybe that’s why it makes people sad.

She could still be sleeping in there. The way she could sleep all day long, emerging in the dead of night, her existence evidenced only by blooming ashtrays and vanishing produce and misplaced remote controls, the mischief of a miserable ghost.

I guess that’s what rage is: the point where your words fail the power of your emotions.

Maybe touching someone is the kindest thing you can do; making a person feel like it’s okay to touch them, that they’re touchable and not disgusting, is the easiest and best way to make a person feel good in the world.

He told me that suffering makes a person special, fills a soul with angular gems of transcendent knowledge, so many perspectives contained within each one.

Everyone seemed to think the corkboard was adorable, a word that should be considered a slur in an old age parlor.