by Edward Michael Supranowicz
Color Theory at the Detox Center
A coal-black ergonomic chair toppled by the window.
Silver-grey fork in the microwave.
Too close to the gas stove her lavender nightgown.
My mother needs a minder full-time now.
She marvels at the “normal” people here who were addicts once:
Marina the beautiful chef,
Christina the regal helper with a nose ring,
Bill the benevolent nurse.
“Ma,” I say, “It can happen to anyone.”
She holds a glass of root beer close to her chest,
umber floe of ice. At home white pills we haven’t found
still lurk in crevices and drawers, like copperheads
under the furniture. A single dose of opiates could kill her now.
The 82-year-old addiction specialist tries to explain
my mother’s brain to her. Listen, I want to say,
she’ll never understand.
He has worn an orange tie-dyed dress shirt
because he thinks she was a hippie.
My mother hated hippies for their lack of nuance,
and tie-dye equally, but she smiles coyly
like my grandmother did for any man.
Before I leave we sit in front of the window
and study a color wheel. Suddenly she is all there:
my scrupulous mother who liked to point out
that the word paint had pain in it.
She holds the palette knife over imaginary swabs of color:
you take a little red, a little yellow, then a little grey…
She mixes them with skill.
“It’s easy,” she says. “I can do it in my sleep.”
Francesca Preston is a writer and visual artist based in Petaluma, California. She lives part-time in the ghost town of her Ligurian ancestors, and can’t think of herself without old rusty objects. Her poetic work has appeared in Phoebe, Crab Creek Review, Stonecoast Review, Ekphrastic Review, One Sentence Poems, and the RHINO art2art challenge. Her first chapbook, If There Are Horns, is forthcoming in 2022. francescapreston.com.
Edward Michael Supranowicz is the grandson of Irish and Russian/Ukrainian immigrants. He grew up on a small farm in Appalachia. He has a grad background in painting and printmaking. Some of his artwork has recently or will soon appear in Fish Food, Streetlight, Another Chicago Magazine, The Door Is a Jar, The Phoenix, and other journals. Edward is also a published poet.