Art Credit: Andre Gonçalves
MOTHER METH
I joined a volunteer project and was asked to remove furniture from an abandoned home. But I didn’t expect tales of occupants made for a messy cable movie. A mother of four strung out on meth having sex parties to pay for her habit while children played with toys in the other room.
Nudity and neglect ruled the night filled with players higher than the Chinese trade deficit. Pizza stains and pot resin soaked the white plush carpet. Beer and backwash painted walls like an idiotic art project. The groans and grunts of grinding were masked by music machines pumping the latest club hit.
Two days passed and her children stopped playing and started begging anyone in the house for food. The oldest, 6, opened a cabinet and passed out crackers to his siblings. One of the four had diabetes and slowly slipped into a coma while slumped in a corner presumably asleep.
The police entered the premises with guns drawn. They found half-starved kids happy to see daylight. One near death barely had a heartbeat. Their mother was passed out in a pool of vomit. The stench stained the air like a full unflushed toilet from 1999.
It’s hard to know what goes through the mind of a mother enslaved to meth. It’s hard not to judge her when so many children have been impacted by her decisions. All I could do is say a prayer for her recovery. If only she loved her children more than she hated herself.
About the author:
Mark Antony Rossi‘s poetry, criticism, fiction, creative nonfiction and photography have appeared in The Antigonish Review, Anak Sastra, Bareback Magazine, Black Heart Review, Brain of Forgetting, Deep Water Literary Journal, Dirty Chai, Enclave, Expound, Farther Stars Than, Flash Fiction, Gravel, Indian Periodical, Japanophile, Journal of Microliterature, Kulchur Creative Journal, Mad Swirl, On The Rusk, Purple Patch, Scrivener Creative Review, Sentiment Literary Journal, Snapdragon, Syzygy Poetry Journal, The Sacrificial, Toad Suck Review, Transnational, Vine Leaves Literary Journal, Wild Quarterly and Yellow Chair Review. http://ethical-stranger.webnode.com/
Art Credit: Andre Gonçalves