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Show Motherlunge a novel 131 And in response or by comparison I was small and shiftless. I was the acolyte standing to the side; I held the tarnished candlesnuffer. Threads of black smoke rose around me, a sinner.... A second barrier to entry vis a vis a relationship with my nephew was the perceived (by me) fragility of him (X.). My backpack-which typically holds my coin purse, my glasses case and repair kit, a book, chapsticks, a bottle of ibuprofen, a bottle of water, a complimentary motel sewing kit, and a sedimentary layer of half-damp and crumpled ATM receipts-weighs more than my nephew at five months of age. And as with my backpack, I was acutely aware of X.'s location at all times, lest it/he be stolen. This awareness-simultaneously acute and chronic-was a burden to me. Despite what I had written in my QmedCare employment application, I never welcomed additional responsibility. Further, it was a burden to feel uncared for by comparison to X. It was dismaying how this feeling stretched back toward the baby that was me sitting in my playpen and squinting-as I must have done, as my myopia wasn't diagnosed until I entered kindergarten-at a fuzzy TV screen while Dorothy napped. And now that same feeling stretched forward as well, toward my future self, an old woman alone, clinging to a radiator for warmth and friendly sound effects. "Do you wish he was yours?" Cassandra had whispered to me at the hospital the day after X. was bom. I had looked at her-model, mistress, muse. A muse, I thought then, I finally get it. A muse is someone who leads you close to what you want, right up to the glass. |