Five years after
she walked out,
leaving me behind
with a drunk dad
and no way to reach her,
Mom called,
not to see
how I was doing,
but to see
if I’d give her
“52nd Street,”
the Billy Joel album
with “My Life.”
“Can you do that?” she asked.
“For me? Your ‘ole mom?”
I took a sip of warm pop.
I heard her shake out pills.
Rolling over on the bed,
I looked at my records,
skinny strips of color
in stacked milk crates,
filling a wall with pattern.
“I don’t know,” I said.
“Ask someone else.”
She swallowed
and cleared her throat
“My god,” she cried.
“You’re so selfish.
Just like him.”
Setting the phone down,
I walked to the window
and lit a cigarette.
She kept wailing,
blending with the drift
of car radios
on the street below.
