Knotted emotions

As they drove in confrontational silence

He felt the usual intense unease

build within

His reason crashing

Against the walls of her

irrational convictions

In the fortieth year of attempting this

his heart and mind both

know well the inevitable

failure in this interaction.

Maybe his forty years of patience

or the fifty seasons signaling mid-life

led to the moment

when he stopped the car

on that lonely stretch of a Passaic county backroad, 
and said 
"Out"

to his eighty-two year old mother.     

Unsure himself 
of whether he’d issued a threat or command

uncertain of the measure of his own conviction

He decided in the moment

that it was an instruction

I’ll drop you off here, he said,

And you can find your way home.

I have had enough of your suspicions

Your hostility,

Your disparaging words.

No more.

…

they drive on

an unusual calm settling in the space between them

like a pleasant cloud

comforting

even as his heart is racing to be calm

his mind working furiously to be cool

somehow

in some unforeseen way

the threat has stemmed the tide

at least for now

a first…

…

a little later

in the mall

He shops for a winter jacket

for her

downstairs.

Not finding any he asks and is told

its upstairs

that he should be looking.

He tells her to wait

he will go upstairs

find a jacket and come back for her.

‘Come back soon, son’

she says

‘I don’t want to be lost’.