“Where were you last night?”

We’ve already had this conversation twice this morning. She’s forgotten it again.

So I explain one more time. Slowly because she has to read my lips and now her eyes are going, too.

“Mom, I was here last night.”

It was last week that I spent a night away. I just have to go sometimes.

She doesn’t remember a conversation we had ten minutes ago, but she remembers me leaving her alone one night a week ago.

“Have we eaten yet?”

I tell her we have. We haven’t but she doesn’t know the difference and I don’t feel like cooking. I wonder why she has to ask me that. Can’t she tell if she’s hungry? Maybe she is but doesn’t want to tell me.

We drink another cup of coffee. I smoke another cigarette, watch another news clip about impeachment proceedings. The sun climbs a little higher in the sky.

“Where were you last night?”

Erica Dawn is a mother, wife, daughter, friend, poet.

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