lungs and bones

by Abigail Cooper

The longer you stay, the harder it’s gonna get to breathe.

            Mama told me that one years ago—way before the bugs started crawling through splintered cracks and dirt fell into deepening grooves and crevices. Back when her eyes were still that sky blue, open to the world around her.

            Now, I couldn’t tell you the color. (Would there be any color left?)

            Mama said to me, “Lula Mae, now you listen here.” So direct, she was. I couldn’t ignore her even if I wanted to. “There ain’t no reason for you to stay. When I’m gone, you get the hell outta here. Run like the devil’s on your tail, you hear?”

            I heard her, loud and clear. The torment of her mother and her mother’s mother sat on the tip of her tongue, boiling her blood till it ran clear.

            But that was ten years ago.

            I was nineteen, bright eyed and bushy-tailed—soul only darkened by the glowing sunset peaking over the mountains surrounding us.

            Mama said I had a world ahead of me—my oyster was there, pearls waiting to be picked from the depths of all I’d be willing to pick through.

            I could have almost tasted it.

            But of course, mama never told me how hard it would be to leave.

            How the walls started closing in around you, constricting your arms, your mouth, your lungs. You could see, think, and on occasion, you could remember what it was like to feel anything in your bones other than the gaping loneliness these mountains kept home to.

            The air soured and your lungs could only feel the cold, cruel air.

            Old floorboards needing replaced, paint flaking from haphazardly painted walls (the ones mama and I painted my sophomore year, off-white and yellow décor still sitting there, asking—begging to be seen by the same eyes that loved them so long ago). Brass doorknobs now silver, fingerprints melting into one another—did I hold her hand again when I held the knob?

            The warmth is gone.

            I won’t ever hold her again.

            This place was falling apart under my fingertips.

            Mama told me to sell it. She said, “Think about the money, Lu. Sell it, save it. Go north, girl.”

            I did go north.

            I moved my bedroom. It’s toward the mountain peak, now, in the same bedroom I watched my mama take her last breath.

            …

            I like to think she can see me.

            The church pulpit blazes bright—Sundays are on the backburner. Paper thin pages and weathered leather—my mama wouldn’t like that.

            Is she proud?

            Nah. I know she’s raving. Has God told her to be quiet, or does He listen to her?

            He gives her the ears I should have given her, doesn’t He?

            “Lula Mae! What did I say? Staying in this damn place. You had the chance to leave. Why didn’t you?”

            Only God and my bedroom walls knew my answers.

            “Mama, I can’t leave.”

            “Mama, this is my home.” Our home.

            “There ain’t nothing here, mama, but it’s where I had you.”

            How could you leave the only home you’ve ever known?

            Even after everyone is gone.

            Even when the floorboards finally give in, when the dust settles and all that’s left are the pieces of a past you will never get back.

            How can you leave?

            All my memories.

            My mama.

            My heart is in this house.

            Last week, I saw it beating in the laundry room by the growing pile of denim. A month ago, I found it in the cookie jar mama hid her pink bubblegum in. Bruised and bloodied, I picked it back up and put it where it belonged. The discomfort of finding it again and again always sent me reeling.

            I tell myself I’ll leave.

            I’ll leave, get the hell outta here like my mama said.

            But leaving… I’m nothing if I leave. Finding my heart in this place is hard enough. Imagine the panic if I leave. A rush to return, through the window, broken glass, muscle finding somewhere safe as the windowpane’s cuts deepen the everlasting wound.

            It ain’t easy to live.

            I can’t leave.

            Mama’d call me a baby if she had the chance.

            I’d like that.

            Calling me baby, one more time. Her baby.

            The air, it’s never been so thick before. Heartache floats with the dust of memories and hopes and dreams left behind, words and wants once spoken now a faint echo of everything that once breathed with me.

            All that is left of my mother rests in the bones of this house.

            Has the air always been so suffocating or have I finally stayed long enough to die?

Photo of Abigail Cooper

BIO: Abigail Cooper is a young woman born and raised in West Virginia, USA. After receiving her bachelor’s degree in English and history and her master’s degree in the art of teaching, all in less than four years after graduating high school, she now works in the public school system. However, writing is her passion, and she wishes to continue pursuing it in the very near future. Find her writing on Instagram and Tumblr @writerabigailcooper.