Mother’s Day

by Mia Sara

My gangling pale
bedroom-eyed
boy child,
telling me lies
as I drive downhill.
“They need me,” he says.
Self-starved
distressed damsels,
the bloated buddy,
dumped again,
punks of privilege,
just postpubescent,
wall-eyed, bored,
aimless
as fish in a barrel.
His friends.
“Sorry, Mom,”
his voice via Bluetooth
slurring
from the dashboard,
blowing me off,
annoyed,
as if it was my fault,
this shuck-and-jive,
routine
disengagement,
this come-on, before
the letdown.

Last Sunday night,
when I passed out
cold
on the bathroom floor,
reaching
for a towel, I thought,
It could have been worse.

I came down hard
enough
to crack my skull,
but my ribs
broke the fall
against the white
porcelain sink, saving
my brain,
my teeth, my chin
from shattering.
My middle-aged
bone cage
took the impact,
and held up.
“Mama,” he says,
“I’ll see you on Mother’s Day.
I promise.”
“Sure,” I say, “see you then,”
checking myself
for damage.
I’m OK,
just a bruise.
It only hurts
when I breathe.

Mia Sara was born and raised in New York City. At the age of fifteen she began a career as an actress. Her acting credits include Legend, Ferris Beuhler’s Day Off, Time Cop, Queenie, A Stranger Among Us, Jack and the Beanstalk: The Real Story, and many others. After twenty-five years of night shoots, she remembered that she’d always wanted to be writer. Mia Sara’s writing has appeared or is forthcoming in Mudlark, Chapparal, The Cossack Review, Edison Literary Review, Superstition Review, poemmemoirstory, The Southampton Review, The Write Room, Smartish Pace, PANK, Cultural Weekly, among others. The Dusie Press published her chapbook, Still Life With Gorilla, in 2014. Her column “Wrought and Found” ran for two years on the PANK blog, and is now a regular contributor at Barrelhouse Magazine with her column “Not Your High School Girlfriend” She lives in Los Angeles with her husband and children but misses New York every single day. http://miasara.nyc/