light dimmers

        Mother is taking more and more intervals from her preparations where she goes to the bathroom and touches up her hair. The children listen to Mother's instructions frequently, but they can neither feel nor emulate. Randomly misplaced items, a stack of magazines strategically laid out in some order of incomprehensible order, a vase, a wine bottle opener. All of these objects threaten this woman. Mother hisses at the daughter: the napkins! The children do not realize that they are dealing with a professional. Mother's nose, her mouth--everything becomes an arrow pointing in one direction; it plows through the area as if to say: Keep moving. Father breathes heavily. Mother assumes a creative pose in front of the refrigerator. 

Sister holds the pan with the bunt cake to her nose. She deeply inhales the aroma, the fruits of someone else's hard labor. She longs for a poison cabinet, like in the movies.  Mother walks over to where she is at the dining table and snatches the pan away. She forgot to drizzle the Marsala pecan sauce over the cake. Her son lies on the couch in the living room. His mouth, lacking the fine creases of age, opens and closes effortlessly. Her daughter then walks over to where a new Cabernet bottle rests in the arms of a monkey butler (figurine designed to hold bottles of wine, not an actual trained monkey). Mother comes and holds the bottle in her hands. She will place it somewhere out of sight. No, that would be ridiculous. She will just place it in the cabinet behind the triscuits until the night is over and the missionary they are hosting this evening has left. 

         Sister shouts out in direction toward her brother, pointing out that God also created women. 

In the evening the adults of the house, who have to work hard all day, stretch out on lazy boys under the purply haze that fills a room whenever the TV has been turned on. This is the beginning of a chain that runs backward all night, until seven in the morning. Both Mother and Father have glasses of wine. Father's is poured generously. Mother's is a methodical and conservative glass. 

Sister speaks into the candle next to her girlfriend she had over earlier and who now must be leaving (before the missionary comes). She puts on a show, moving her fingers in and out of the flame:

feels right, honey, yes,

but don't go burning your big

fingers now (honey)

When the light of day goes out, adults start remembering their regrets. The night comes out with ambient light bulbs and paperwork or with instant coffee brass knuckles. It is accompanied by people who have lost out on life. In some corners decay knocks with scurrying fingers, like rats unseen between the walls.