Maddie would look at it for three hours straight. She always felt bad for not polishing it and even more for calling it it. It was her mother for godsake! She knew better but somehow this ritual practice only made her feel worse. Her eyes reddened, and her stomach flattened to the bones as she would try to make sense as to why she no longer felt attached to her mother.

      Her mother was sick. Maddie had begged her to fight, please mom live, and her mom begged her to leave her alone. You aren’t letting me live by telling me to keep on living, she’d say. All Ms. Katie wanted was for everyone to know that after she passed, at least her soul would not die with her. She lingered at the thought that her mother’s soul was wandering in that dusty vase. Maybe she wanted to get out, maybe she liked being inside because it was like a cocoon-warm and comfy. Maybe, only maybe. She had said, before it’s better for a soul to have a comforting place where love is nurtured by those outside of it. The fruit bears out of love my child. The soul must be fed, and it is only fed by those who the soul accepts.

      Perhaps her mother never loved her. The more she’d stare the more she’d feel the spirit of her mother push her away, the more she felt herself wanting to crack the vase and eat the ashes away. She’d at least felt peace knowing her mother’s soul was inside her and not inside this stupid green and pink flower vase she had bought three months ago at a thrift store.

     Sitting in her blue dress, ten feet from the vase, she wished her mom would come to take it off. She wanted her mom to see her nudity like the day she saw hers. She found her mother naked in the bathtub.

     Mom its time for dinner, and her mom stood still like a moth. If only her mom had waited to take a bath after dinner, maybe, she wouldn’t have died. The Chinese food she had prepared that day would have given her a boost or the pumpkin pie she had baked would have given her the sweetness of life. No, her mother was so peculiar and so stubborn. That’s why she had so many wrinkles. She yelled all the time at Maddie for obstructing her schedule if she hadn’t done what she wanted on time.

      Mom I’ll clean the garden, you go inside and rest.

      No child, and she’d continue to tug on the weeds as she felt her heart barely beat up in the air. Her white hands reminding her that her veins weren’t carrying enough white blood cells anymore- slowly killing her as they diminished in blood quantity each day, hour, and second.

     She hated herself for hating the vase, and she hated that her mother did not care for her suffering. She sat up from the rocking chair and took the vase in her hands from the countertop of the kitchen. She gripped it with all her might just as her mother would hug her at bedtime when she was a child. Goosebumps rose from her toes to her fox face, and she felt her mother choke the words that wanted to fly out of her mouth to say,

     I hate you mother. I hate you for not letting me help. A tornado started to form inside her. If she broke the vase her mother would be mad, and if she didn’t, she’d have to continue to do her rituals until one day her mother would finally give in.

     She couldn’t understand why her mother didn’t want to be fed. She fed Maddie as a child- Gave her her favorite meals. 

     Noodles and teriyaki chicken momma! And bought her clothes, and gave her money but the one time she wanted to give all of this back her mother refused. Why was her mother so distressed with her? What had she done wrong?

    What’s so special about living in a fucken vase! She yelled. Maddie cried as she remembered all of this. She felt her hands weaken. She slipped onto the floor holding the vase at her chest. Bent down, she felt her knees dig for help, and her head cross a bridge of hopelessness.

     From the window of the tight cardboard house a butterfly flew onto the vase. Maddie stopped crying and the tiny colored creature slipped onto her fingers. Maddie held it with such sensitivity. She examined it as she had examined her mother when she first found out the news she had breast cancer. Momma is this you? She spoke to the butterfly and not at the vase. She placed the vase next to her and still in a prayer position, she hugged the butterfly.

 

Sitting and waiting

Maddie fought and now is free

She fed her mom since-

The leaves of summer and spring

The love that outgrew her hatred

 Forever will be