….But in the end, I know that my mother doesn’t love me.

I knew it when I was a child.

I went to Kroger’s and bought a bouquet. In my memory, it’s blurry and large, as big as me, the flowers a smear I can’t recall. Were they pink or red? Were they roses? I don’t know. I remember the cool, crinkly plastic. It was that murky blue-green people associate with florals.

Me and my father went to the hospital to see her. She was all wrapped in bandages, everything except her face. I can’t recall what she said to me. I remember that I wasn’t scared, just apprehensive. This was my mother. I loved my mother. She talked to me over the phone. She brought me a unicorn toy to my birthday party at Chuck E. Cheese, hours late.

Everyone had a mother. I had a mother. But she was far away from me. She was somewhere I couldn’t go. She called me and said she wanted a bible name for my new little brother. I remembering standing in our perpetually dim kitchen, the black plastic shell of the phone. Her excited voice over the line.

A few months ago I went to visit with my cousin.

“ Remember when Luke was just born, or like your mom was still pregnant with him, and we were super little and visiting wherever she lived at the time?” she asked.

“ Only a little bit,” I said. “ I remember that the house was really dirty, and it had wood paneled walls. And I drank one of those blue juice barrels.”

“ Yeah, like, I have no idea how that was okay,” she said. “ I remember your mom gave me some jello out of the fridge, and it like had a dead bug in it.”

“ What the fuck, I don’t remember that,” I said. But I’ve always hated jello.

We went to her house and played video games.

I recalled the houses my mother was always in. Amorphous, shifting. Wood-paneled halls and strange televisions. The diaper genie she had after Luke was born. Nerf darts and trash cans. Burt’s Bees lip balm. The refrigerators, yellowed and humming.

Look at me. Please look at me. Don’t throw me away.

She’s always somewhere else. I’m right in front of her, but she’s somewhere else. I can’t reach out to her. Her hands are made of knives. I get cut to ribbons. It hurts, and I bleed. There’s a stabbing pain deep in my chest, whenever she tries to hug me. I want to hiss and snap like a wild animal. Or maybe more like a beaten dog.

It’s been so long, and I’m still the same. I’m in my party dress, my hand wrapped in bandages and my hair pinned up. I look for her in the audience of my kindergarten recital. I look for her in the Chuck E. Cheese. I stand by the hospital bed with flowers. It’s always dark and cold.

I’m always alone.