Why won’t she talk to me like my mom? I can still feel the times when she’d hold me without this barrier between our love. The times when crying was just tears and not faults. Still, she will choose to dance around the sustenance in my teenage years and move straight onto relevance, “I think the bed should go here.” 

Great. I could honestly care less where my bed goes, “that sounds nice mom”. 

I manage to keep my words calm to combat the intrusive steam within me. Beneath my front, turbines wind themselves into a power source for anger. Yet I remember my patience.

“This wall paint looks awfully close to your old room. Maybe we keep it?” my mother’s soft tone tings against my ear canal like a fork in the disposal. 

Why does she irk me? I take advantage of her brief pause to contemplate my response, “I think we should change the color. Green feels very overbearing in this type of environment, purple will be more soothing.” 

Prior to the divorce, green was my color. 

“Purple sounds perfect! Will you grab a side and help me lug this big thing into the corner”, we heave it against a wall, rearrange some drawers, then slide the vanity in place.

The room feels pathetic compared to what my family used to be like before moving in with my mom and her boyfriend. So at sixteen years old I don’t hold onto my attitude well, “You acting like this house is some sort of miracle!” Extending my arms outward to gesture a heightened shrug, I purposefully escalate the conversion, “This room is tiny compared to the one at dad’s house”. 

“Why won’t you just try to accept this next chapter in our lives?” My mother’s question poses itself as a plea. 

  My comment hit her. 

My mom stops her adjusting of objects and instead adjusts her gaze. She fully focuses the mahogany eyes she's been reserving all night onto me. She stares at me with new found confusion, almost memorizing my “foreign” features. We both understand that our connection is not the same as it once was, but we never imagined it slipping away. “Would this lamp look better in a corner over there, or by the bed?” My mother's voice is stale.

At this moment, my words are expendable, they flow out of me in a concoction of hot lava and mucus, “You broke our family for this? This is the dream life? Walking around on eggshells to make each piece of this messed up puzzle happy!” 

The silence that follows screams. 

Then is when I release my clenched fist. The imprint in my palm pulsates, leaving a dull throb in my hand. It's enough of a distraction for my mother to slip out my bedroom door and into her own bed until morning.