Diana Darby ** "I V" ** Intravenous

Mayonnaise

Last night she called me in a panic
frantic to get to her class,
and unable to figure out how to get there.
She accused me of taking all her money
and seemed to have no idea how to call Access a Cab
or the other three transportation services I arranged for them.
She said it was my fault
and now she was going to miss her class.
It’s always my fault.
It was my fault that I loved my father more
than her growing up.
It was my fault I tried to bring order in to chaos
and honesty into a house of lies.
It was my fault
I was born half-Jewish
and reminded her of my father.
I had his eyes
and eyebrows and nose.
I had his sense of humor,
a humor she never understood.
I loved watching football with him,
and playing ping-pong at half-time,
and eating Oreo cookies together.
We both found humor in the tragic
whereas my mother would just find
the tragic.
Everything to her was a crisis.
A drama.
A three-act play
that had to be resolved in one act.
I guess I could sum it up like this:
My father and I loved corn beef and bagels
with mustard.
My sister and my mother were
mayonnaise all the way.