BY ALICIA TURNER
“the dead / borrow so little from / the past / as if they were alive.”
A Little White Shadow — Mary Ruefle
Shadow Work (on Checking my Dead Mother’s Horoscope)
It’s a Tuesday morning.
I am scrolling through an online obituary guestbook to relive my mother’s life.
She’s immortalized on the top of the page — the photo a scanned copy of a Polaroid from a throwaway camera that I once begged her to develop.
She’s wearing a solid white t-shirt — one that she changed out of just moments after the photo was taken, in fear of spilling something on it.
I always remember the minor moments, but not the mess. And I hate that about myself.
My mother went missing and was declared dead on the same day: Tuesday, October 17th, 2006.
Her body wasn’t found until weeks later, in the passenger seat of my uncle’s beaten-down, blue truck, nestled in muddy water and the river’s rage —
which is to say that she gave herself back to the earth and is the reason the earth has something to grieve.
Then, at fourteen, I colored it painfully ironic – that blue was her favorite color, and she never stopped moving, and she loved to swim. I was sure when the truck accelerated that she saw the sky in the rear view. Tested time, balled up her fists, and fought fate. Told fate to “Go fuck itself,” like she’d tell anyone who held her down, who told her to be still.
My mother was a twisting, turning thing. My mother was reckless in still water.
***
I’ve always said with certainty that October 17th was “blue.” On that day, the rain was relentless. I didn’t bring an umbrella to school because no one predicted it —
not even the weekly forecast in the back of the countertop magazines (* that my mother would refuse to get rid of solely for the horoscope sections). She was a real-life laugh track and a heavy heart (a proclaimed Leo rising), who loved to have her life be read back to her.
But not me, no — all Virgo. I’ve always been too afraid of flying off the page, to show up for life, to slow down. I’ve always been too careful to go puddle jumping for the fear of tracking messes – but my mother encouraged it. She liked predicted chaos, as simple and complex as it was.
***
This is the part where I transition into telling you that I tracked her body for weeks. And I tell you that the water was too elevated to find her. That October 17th was blue because it bruised me like a punch to the gut. Like a gut feeling. And you want to tell me that “it’s not [my] fault,” but I am not a blameless God. I am no God at all.
But on that day the moon was in Virgo.
And the moon controls the tides.
And rivers eventually end up flowing into oceans.
I make-believe that the sky helped me intuit the words she needed to her — and trust that I had the best view of her life.
While irrational, I wish I would’ve called it sooner. Not waited for her to call.
Not pretended to believe in underwater voyages where I spent whole days holding my breath.
Because now I think of her every time I find a phone book.
I think of her every time it’s bright out and twice when it rains.
I always check the weather before I leave the house, because I like predictions. Predictability.
And I always check my horoscope.
***
Today, it tries to teach me the difference between surface and depth:
“There’s a grand water configuration mysteriously guiding your hand.
Have you heard the water is still rising?”
From somewhere behind the shadow work, my mother’s starry-eyed news reads:
“Dear, Leo: Be cautious. Water is the only element that can extinguish your flame. But do not fear — your life is loud, all blazing. You are an incessantly-lit cigarette – no ashes. The river’s mouth is always hungry for more — but so are you.
You will never be caught dead in a white t-shirt, to be a stain on your own life.”
Alicia Turner holds an MA in English and is a grant writer & storyteller. She can be found writing confessional, conversational poetry in an over-priced apartment somewhere in WV. Her work is featured or forthcoming in Four Lines (4lines), CTD's ‘Pen-2-Paper’ project, Voicemail Poems, FreezeRay Poetry, Defunkt Magazine, Sybil Journal, The Daily Drunk, ExPat Press, Rejection Letters Press, Screen Door Review, J Journal Literary Magazine, Sledgehammer Lit, Screenshot Lit, Taint Taint Taint Magazine, Cartridge Lit., Space City Underground, époque press, among others.