Repeat
Offender
by
Lylanne Musselman
Nothing
prepares you for the broken record
of
your mom’s mind on a circular spin;
with
each repeated phrase you feel yourself
spinning
out of control. You must remember
she
cannot reason any more than one can reason
with
a two-year-old. Sometimes when you tell her
she
can’t drive anymore she argues, cries, and pleads
to
give her just one more chance. You tell her you’re afraid
for
her safety and the safety of others. She says you can
ride
with her and if she does something bad, just tell her
to
pull over and she will; and all at once you remember:
a
younger, saner mom who was mad at you
as
a young adult, a passenger in her car.
She
floored it on the back roads, saying she didn’t care
if
she killed us both. And, you realize how irrational
she
has always been – when she is not in control.
Lylanne
Musselman is an award-winning poet, playwright, and artist,
living in Indiana. Her work has appeared in Pank, Flying Island, The
Tipton Poetry Journal, Poetry Breakfast, The New Verse News,
Ekphrastic Review, and Rat’s Ass Review, among others, and many
anthologies, including Resurrection of a Sunflower, poems to honor
Vincent van Gogh (Pski’s Porch, 2017). A Pushcart Nominee twice,
Musselman is the author of four chapbooks including the recent
Weathering Under the Cat (Finishing Line Press, 2017).