The day I found out my mother had cancer
I knew it before they even spoke. There  was something —
I still can’t name it — something to the silence
after the ringing stopped. My father’s “Hey Bud”
lacked the usual enthusiasm. For twenty minutes
there was only medical jargon, recitation of statistics.
And in the pauses in between I could feel her,
as only a mother could, worrying only how I’d take the news.
When we were done, she told me she loved me,
I replied in kind, and that I knew it would be okay.

It’s always been like that — she, concerned about me,
and me, worried most about what she’d think.
I caught some shit for it growing up — because I knew
she wanted me to do the right thing, when the 3^rd grade
bullies shoved Sherman Willis’ head in the toilet,
I told the teacher, and was exiled for a week —
“Mama’s Boy” they snarled, and pointed.
I never skipped class as a freshman to smoke cigarettes
behind the high school gymnasium, even though
Molly McGuinty asked me to, and she was a junior,
and every pore of my body was lit like a Bunsen burner,
but upperclassmen didn’t sleep with Mama’s Boys.

And even now, I sit at this red light at two in the morning,
with no one around — not even the faintest glow
of headlights beyond the crest of the road ahead.
She’s always with me. I wait for it to turn green,
and only then pull my foot slowly off the break.
Mama’s Boy, I laugh to myself and smirk —
I’ll wear that name like a tattoo on my heart.

She takes the apple in her palm
and presses the paring knife
under the flesh just below the stem.
As if it required no thought,
as if it were natural as falling asleep,
she spins the apple slowly
with one hand, and pulls
the blade toward her other thumb.
It’s like watching an ice dancer,
or a gymnast on a balance beam —
you’re sure that every next move
will slice jaggedly into her,
and fall to the floor in a clatter,
blood dripping to pool at her toes.
But she doesn’t break eye contact,
not even a pause in the conversation;
red skin, pulled from white flesh,
hanging below in a slow twirl
like a music-box ballerina.
And when she’s finally done,
she slides the knife out
with the slighted tug, a pinch
between the thumb and forefinger,
lays the peel on the counter,
and excises a perfect wedge for me.
I, who would have used a peeler —
a safe, plastic contraption, and shed
the skin in dull patches into the sink,
because she is offering it, take the fruit
in my mouth straight from the blade.
cold, crisp between my lips, my teeth,
and yet, I have not pulled my eyes
from the peel, reposing on the gray marble
in all its glorious concentricity.