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This writing was accepted for publication in the 84 page perfect-bound issue... Down in the Dirt magazine (v078) (the January 2010 Issue) This is also available from our printer as a a $7.47 paperback book (5.5" x 8.5") perfect-bound w/ b&w pages

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Routine

Randy Boone

When I was six
    or maybe I was seven,
my dad worked nights,
and I’d be home
    alone
with my mom.
And often,
around about ten o’clock
    or maybe ten-thirty,
she would write down a number
    on a small slip of paper—
    944-9221—
    the telephone number that called
    the Fleetwood police department.
She’d give me the paper
and hand me the phone
and sit me by the top of the stairs
that led to the cellar,
    where my dad kept all his guns.
“I’m going downstairs,”
    she’d say to me,
“to shoot myself in the head
    because I just can’t take it
    no more.
So, when you hear the shot,
you call the police,
and don’t go downstairs
    by yourself.”
And so she’d go down,
    and so I would sit.
Sometimes for minutes,
    and sometimes for hours.
Sometimes I’d go down,
    and she’d be smoking Bel Airs,
    and I’d tell her we need her,
    she can’t kill herself,
    to come back upstairs.
And other times I’d sit
    and I’d sit and I’d sit,
    and she’d come back upstairs,
    taking the phone from me,
cursing me off to bed.
It was our routine;
    it happened enough.

*    *    *    *

Then when I was twenty-two
    or perhaps twenty-three,
we got in a fight,
    just me and my mom.
Words cut through the air
    slicing at spirits,
    shredding the bond
    that could have been torn
    with a finger.
What she said to me,
    I can’t recall,
but that’s when I pulled it out,
    the story of the phone
    and the steps
    and the guns.
I lunged for the throat
    with my razor edged scimitar,
for I knew
    that she’d know
    that I understood
    how wrong she had been
    at the time.
I thrust it at her face
    to squelch every last living trace
    of bitch that was left inside her soul,
the whole story
    of the episodes
    again and again
    with the phone
    and the steps
    and the guns.
I screamed it at her;
    it was how things came out.

And the argument froze.
She looked a bit stunned
    and then simply asked,
“You still remember
    that?”

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