Room 210; Saturday Afternoon [03/09].

Astrid was on her bed, on her back, draped in her mother's white kimono, and staring up at the ceiling like it was a sky covered in stars. There was a letter in her hand, a letter that she kept lifting and reading, again and again, even though by now she'd known it practically by heart by now. Especially one part, the part she kept returning to, reciting it like a poem before reading it again, as if to confirm that they were real, as if to assure herself they were there, to prove that it wasn't all just a figment of her supposedly dull imagination.

In her letter about the trip, Astrid had written so much, and in the letter in response, Ingrid met her in volume. That alone, that rare moment where their efforts were evenly matched, tit-for-tat, was enough to send her to the moon. She'd included a few new poems she was working on, waxed intellectual on her time in and out of solitary, about new cell mates, about other women and their relationships with their own daughters, reminisced about when she and Astrid were living in Europe, in Paris, in Amsterdam.

But it was the very last part, right before her looping, almost affectionate signature of simply 'Mother' that Astrid had memorized already, that she kept repeating back to herself before reading it again, a rich and decadent morsel of dessert after gorging herself on a sumptuous feast of words:

'I would have like to have seen Iceland with you. I should have seen Iceland with you. This distance between us is unfathomable; I find it harder and harder to feel you, to reach out to you and know you're still there. It's unconscionable that so much should separate us. I'm bringing you home. I don't care if I have to raise holy hell, if I have to burn this entire state to the ground, I am going to do everything I can to make this right. You belong here. You belong with me. A daughter needs her mother. A mother needs her daughter.'

A mother needs her daughter.

A mother needs her daughter.

Thinking of it again, Astrid closed her eyes and drew it close to her chest tight with her racing heart, her face, breathing in deeply, trying to hunt out Ingrid's ever-present smell of violets. It made her want to cry; it made her feel giddy. She opened her eyes and read it again. Yes, it was actually there. Those were the actual words.

Astrid could have been there the rest of the day, just reading, reciting, in some wondrous state of disbelief, but, eventually, feeling like she might just explode into stardust, she rolled off her bed, started to pull it away from the wall, and pulled out the tarps. She had to do something with this incredible energy inside of her; and the only thing she could do, of course, was paint.


[[ door and post are open! *nudges some wheels into motion, mwa ha ha* ]]