I just called to say I love youuu, she sings into the mic as if I’m right with her on the dance floor we made in our dining room right after my parents got divorced. The one my mom wore tap shoes on and swung her tambourine around on, performing her one woman show every night. I recall hearing her up in my room, annoyed and agitated as she screamed lyrics from some Alanis Morrissette song.

Little Plastic Castle on queue-

The one where we open Christmas presents for as many Christmases that I can remember. The same dining room that is the very warfront of every screaming battle between the four of us. The very same dining room I would later find myself, unbalanced, sitting in when I return home from college; furniture the same but rearranged anew. The same dining room I relented to the boom of the speakers and the beat of my mothers tambourine. 

in between the familiar off pitch i love youus, the bus hums and jerks me side to side. my coffee splashing from my mason jar to my pants.

Some mornings I think of no one on my commute and others I yearn for that kind of call from my mother. The one resulting in ballads that she makes up as she goes with a theme of how much she misses me and a snarky comment about how I never answer my phone. I find myself listening to the soundtrack that is my voicemails from a mother, a dance partner, a foe.