some days pick up their own resonances

walking to the bus stop today i passed a mother with a child on her shoulders holding an umbrella walking beneath the underpass and i thought: how nice

a moment later outside the underpass the wind had blown the umbrella inside out and the mother was struggling to right it and it kept brushing the child’s head as she held it unsteadily buffeted and he silently threw his arms up trying to shield himself but she was none the wiser and as i passed them he began wailing, desperate and angry in the way a delayed call mourns its own lateness: “mama! mama!” and i thought: he is calling for a different mother, a mother who protects perfectly, not this beast of burden beneath him carrying him out into the open and failing to shield him from the wind

and in my readings for class today various scholars described how women in japan and china in the 17th and 18th centuries were tasked with a daily practice of moral rectitude and were blamed for falling prey to passion should they miscarry or birth a sickly child — and men worried that if a woman could abort or kill a child (“returning” the infant, it was called), they could kill their husband or fathers as well–

so it was a woman’s duty to take care of herself because a woman is never only taking care of herself, as it were

and an ig story let me know that the supreme court leaked a drafted opinion overturning roe v. wade

and my dentist told me my teeth needed to be ‘scaled,’ deep-cleaned at a price of $50 per quadrant, and a mouth has four, after giving me the most haphazard of ‘normal’ cleanings, though he has repeatedly told me his daughter is my age, and of course i need another year and a half of retainers and braces

anyways i decided not to believe him and left without scheduling another appointment

though i had spent just as much earlier today removing the dust shields from the front wheels of my car, they’d been hissing and clanging in a most worrying fashion though it turns out it wasn’t critical after all

meanwhile i know from brushing and biting that my crooked tartared teeth will last me a bit longer — long enough to ignore for now.