kate.

(October 20, 2006)

"I swear chyle.. you're slower dan molasses tryin' ta run uphill in January!"

The words were vicious but the tone was lavender. A heart-felt sonnet flung into the air like a glass kite, because mama was careless and delicate in all things she did.

"Katharine!"

Kate(the masterful & manic KATE!) poured into the doorway like sorrow with an old cigar box in her velveteen hands, attentive to the refuge mother buried deep in her death shroud of paisley-print sheets.

"I gots it, mama," cajun-bred words fell in uncertainty as her stare cut a hard line to the splatters of blood being coughed up on a doily gone yellow with age. "Maybe I should call da doctor."

The Mama shook her head like death's rattle. Hands frail as paper shoved ornamental sheets down to her bloated waist as she eyed Kate with talent and eloquence and inbred pride. There was nothing the doctors could do, they'd told her as much.

"Come, lay wit' me, bebette." One hand patted sheets that reeked of sickness while it's sister gestured wildly for the box in Kate's perpetually-gloved hands.

With a sigh from her lungs and a creak from the bedsprings, tragedy's daughter climbed into bed with a rotting matriarch. The mama smiled and swept bits of blonde from Kate's face while the girl opened the cigar box. The pair of them laid in the dusty bed, opposites ends of life's string, as Kate assembled the ritual. A slim pipe steadied between her knees.

"I'm dying, you know."

The words stilled Kate's fingers, and sloughed off a piece of her heart. But she could only nod as a dying woman took over the idle labor. Altoids tin popped open and a sticky wad of opium wedged into the glass chariot by mama's thumb.

"I'm not trying to scare you, my little caimon. I want you to understand."

Kate held the lighter for her, gloves kept her fingers from getting hot while flame steadied.

"In my life I have done many things that have given me pleasure," breath was stolen by a suck of the pipe, then held. Remaining words expelled in a plume of candy smoke. "...given me happiness, given me meaning."

Kate could only look away. Frozen as her mother's organs ate away at themselves, and the drugs slowed the pain.

"If I had not done these things, my life would have no value." A half dozen more pokes from the pipe were in order before the mama looped an arm across Kate's waist, drawing her into the cocoon of a corpse.

"Merely living... what point is in dat?" Narcotic breath seethed like poison against Kate's cheek as the nod came on. "Even da junebugs live."