Exoskeleton
Lydia Copeland

It is difficult to tell when I am sleeping and when my mother's arms move above her head to tie something or when the wind blows against the living room side of the house. If it really blows at all. My mother stands in the bathroom wearing a slip. I see her from my bed in my nest of sheet and blankets. She has pins in her mouth, leans into the mirror. An umbrella of silk stockings hangs from the shower. They are blonde and brown and each worn to a mist. The feet point down like a ghost of toes and metatarsals. I dream I am my mother smoking in the kitchen next to Channel 2, lost in the fictions of some other woman and her plotting husband. I see the legs dancing. It snows outside. I see the roads in my head, the snow snakes coming together and disappearing. Today has watered down to hours of winter and fever and television scenes. I have been so quiet my mother might forget me.

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