Ate poisonous mushrooms for eight years
hoping to see her dead daughter in the visions.
Wound up in the ER at age 64 where the Old 97’s played
in the waiting area where she waited for several
long, toxic hours before seeing a doctor who didn’t
do much but tell her to stop with the mushrooms.
She thought, since when do they play music in the ER,
alt-country at that.
She thought, not gonna stop with
the mushrooms. She
thought, I do see things differently
now, so they must be working. She saw strings in things.
All the time, now, ever since the last time.
The stringy substrate that holds it all together.
That’s all she saw, though. No daughter.
The first time she ate them, at a friend’s house back in
2006,
it was Christmastime, or just after. Her friend had a tree up
with all blue lights.
After the poison was coursing through her
body she sat and stared at the blue and it filled her
eyes.
She closed her eyes and the blue turned into a drawing her
daughter had done at age ten. She
felt sick from the poison,
but for the first time since the accident,
she felt peace.
Since that night, she kept trying. She was sure
that it was her daughter who showed her
the drawing, that she was there, attempting to
communicate.
Nothing else ever happened.
Just the strings.
Sometimes there were colors. Sometimes
only darkness. Always
nausea and diarrhea and blood pain.
But no more messages
from the dead. No
daughter.
We can say that it’s crazy
or desperate or sad
to consume something toxic
again and again
hoping for a far-fetched illusion
to bring
some small crumb
of comfort.
But who
down here in this world
made of strings can really
blame
her
all that much for trying ?
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