Do we all die with some things unfulfilled, unused?
I suppose so, as my father would say. I suppose.
I am in that process even now, of never living up to
my potential. It as heartless and inevitable as a snowstorm.
How many years I looked askance at my mother
for not being whatever it is she needed to be, so she was
a contained star burning itself out in the kitchen —
one kitchen after another after another. At least she felt it,
the confinement, rattled against it now and then,
entering a short story contest, say, or standing up for
her own sovereignty. Her clipped, bitten fury when
a telemarketer called, asked for the head of the household,
and I said, I’m sorry. He’s not at home right now.

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7 (to explain later)