chess inconnue i think i should play today 040406 ... ovenbird Beside me in bed, a woman who mothered me but was never my mother. I can’t see her face. Her body is a dim outline. But I can hear her voice. The sheets are a chess board and we are moving our pieces, around the shoreline of tangled sheets, past the pillows that hold our heads. She points out my lack of skill. I’ve moved a rook along the headboard towards her sleeping queen. She laughs. I’ve failed to take into account the position of her knight. In the doorway, a light. Two boys standing still. My son and a friend who holds in his arms a four litre milk jug full of vinegar. A four litre milk jug that explodes, or I think it explodes. There’s a bang and my son is on the floor and the room smells like acetone and I’m standing over my son who is awake but confused. And I say, “what happened?” and I say it again. There’s no sign of the milk jug. There’s no vinegar splattered over the walls. I’m paying for my mistake, for the rook that was taken. My son doesn’t know what happened. He doesn’t know who he is. My mother is with me. My real mother, not the one who wanted a child but never got the chance. We’ll have to take my son to a hospital, have him assessed for a concussion. I didn’t know you could make an explosive from vinegar and a milk jug. But there are so many things I don’t know. Like, how to walk in the rain without getting wet. Like, how many days there are in forever. Like, what move I should make next. 260306 what's it to you? who go blather from