I snuck out of the house
my mother in bed with her bottles
her breakfast coffee covered with a skin of cream
I rode my rickety Schwinn to the library
Miss Lewis looked up and smiled
let me curl up in the red leather chair
that crinkled while I got comfortable
and settled into silence
Wuthering Heights, Little Women, Pride and Prejudice
crinolined dresses and corsets, dainty tea in drawing rooms
trying on the lives of others
not necessarily better
but at least not mine
where my mother played out maudlin scenes
rivaling Medea, where she sometimes swallowed
pills and was taken away in a white van
I still go to the library when time is tough
today I opened Verghese’s The Covenant of Water
and disappeared into three generations of an Indian family
one drowning in each generation
distracting me from the bipolar genes
that run through my family like a marauding lion
sparing some, savaging others
like my mother
like my son
