Day 15 NaPoWriMo - The Stubborn in Our Mouths

Today's prompt asked us to think about a small habit you picked up from one of your parents, and then to write a piece that explores an early memory of your parent engaged in that habit, before shifting into writing about yourself engaging in the same habit.

The Stubborn in Our Mouths

She sets her jaw, the two parentheses
on the left side of her mouth, open,
facing the same pathway.
She thinks hard and her lips move
to the side, crooked, concentrating.
The passage between her eyebrows
narrows like the Suez Canal.
Nostrils flare as if she were a dragon,
ready to flame the world.

In study, discontent, or anger.
It always starts with her mandible,
the mountain peaks of her teeth grit.
Sometimes there is no anger or thought,
she just stares out the window
watching the rain pour over the gutters
as if her body was not there,
just her soul reaching outward,
escaping the mortal weight of being.

I too hold my feelings crooked in my mouth.
My parentheses like the moon shapes of fingernails,
lips offset as I stare at her staring out the window.
Together our shoulders and bodies
curve and slump like parentheses,
pointing in the same direction.
Both of us cannot face the other,
an endless wound of space between us,
we won’t close ourselves with forgiveness.