Unlocked
by KYLE Katz.
He turned his heart away from me, locked his emotions inside a lead drum. His tongue now pitted with a language so profoundly distance from the beat that made our hearts bond. His smile whisked away into another domain. Umbilical chord deliberately buried in a barren land. A land where young boys turn into men.
“May I help you son.”
“No Mom I can do it.”
I hand him a 2O. “ Need some extra money?”
“No Mom I have my own job now.”
“I found something funny on YouTube.” I laugh out loud. “Come watch.”
He reluctantly excavates himself from his media room after 15 minutes of no interest in wanting to view what lame thing I found to make him laugh.
He stares at the screen apathetically and presents that now extremely handsome face with a treasure of thick black hair that twirls around one side of his piercing turquoise eyes.
He wears a white v-neck t-shirt… always pressed. His muscles defined from his strenuous workouts and love for aikido.
He rubs his fingers through his hair.
“I’ve already seen this mom…like a year ago. It’s not funny.”
He swaggers away. Geez, when did that happen? My stomach tightens.
His media door shuts tight.
The new guitar– that hollow body sunburst guitar he got for his 15th birthday starts wailing…the one he saw hanging in the store window of the pawn shop. The price tag he swore was out of reach. I could hear him through the barricade.
His fingers move at lightning speed.
He layers his original vocals on top of his perfect rhythm…thick and raspy with intent. I don’t even recognize the voice.
He slides open the media door that screeches like an emergency exit of metal on metal. As if a seal has been broken to get out…or in.
“Mom, come in and hear this, my new song. its my best work yet!”
I swaggered in. Our eyes meet…lingered…we smiled once again. You could still hear the distant drums. Heartbeats pulled in by a moment of a glorious sunburst. One hidden tear… unlocked.
“Unlocked” by Ms. Katz, the most remarkable woman I have ever known, is an intimate, humourous set of glass schards pushed in and pulled out from her recent life. Here are stain-glass moments with her teenage son, Mr. Katz with respect intended to him. The style of cadence is vivid with an intensity of solar flaired-fingertips.
“Unlocked” ,in my opinion only, broke stain-glass pane after pane across my mind leaving images of pain and joy. I sensed frustrated woundings of shattered intimacy, once a given, and renewed fragments of shining colors still reflecting love in both the now and past.
My favorite sentences are the opening of, “He turned his heart away from me, locked his emotions away in a lead drum” and the last, “One hidden tear…unlocked.” In the opening sentence and early storyline we learn about this teenage boy becoming a young man expressing his independent angst which is understandable in an artist with a genius intensity of self-direction as Mr. Katz seems to possess and later his mother’s sadnesses as the empty-nest approaches. This is what the hidden tear is about I suspect. I believe this mother wishes to remain close son as his early childhood, but allow him to become a man who will claim his own destiny leaving inconsistent moments of separation and moments of sharing. Her son’s adult life calls to him as his childhood fades becoming memories of schared-lights.
Thank you Parisianne. Your depth of expression, your language of poetic verse brings many shades to the writer and the reader. I seem to get even more insight into myself as a writer as you touch on the most vulnerable spots as my pen travels into places that could feel like sharp glass. I think that when you love so much, so deep as a mother’s love, when the seed finally pushes through the ground into the sunlight…you have to find happiness in being part of the soil.
You have, in my limited opinion, been as much the sunlight for your son as the ground that his seed matured from. There are the four signs of Earth, water, air and fire. Both of you in my opinion are all four elements whether in or out of balance with each other. The nearly perfect symbiosis in the past is still powerfully vivid, richly expressive in art and interconnected for life beyond the spiritual reach of any umbilical cord. The breaking of ground is a dramatic upheaval, but the soil and sprouting plant will remain part of each other for there are roots as well as blooms.
Extraordinary and masterful – such depth, beauty, and emotional to capture the most silent of heartstrings. “Umbilical cord deliberately buried in a barren land.” Felt that one all the way to the “mother” core. Your writing has increased in such a depth that strikes my muse into a wake up call. Wonderful.
I agree with you Diane that “Umbilical cord deliberately buried in a barren land.” is the most powerful phrase in the story. The pain and full intention within the expression, however, I suspect, is more than just mother-son seperation from a oneness of spirit. I read this expression of parting as being just as multi-layered in complexity as the authoress herself.
Culturally, the burial is a fertility rite to heal barren land as it is in folklore, but was it meant that way here? Only Ms. Katz knows the answer and some answers are best left buried.
Yes! I did leave that up to the reader to interpret, because both ways works in full expression of death and birth. The birth of a young man turning into a boy. The land was barren , but the soil rich with love. In essence I had to turn away. I had to release him.
His placenta was buried in bathtub that is used for plants in my garden. In this particular tub…everything I have planted seems to thrive.Including a large palm that will not grow anywhere else in my garden. I told him this birthday that his placenta was buried in the tub and why. “Response…”ewe…Gross!” Maybe I should have kept that one hidden.
No! Such beauty of natural being should reach the light and not be buried forever a secret waiting to be forgotten by time. Thank you.
The most silent of heart strings is accurate. Thank you for your praise. You have been and continue to be one of my strongest supporters.
Thanks Diane. The most silent of heart strings, knowing that one day they must leave and your role changes.
The joy and the sadness…”The best of time…the worst of times.” and no time left to say goodbye with your arms open wide and a forehead kiss that used to be welcomed. That time has passed also. Now the question. Have I grown? And who have I become? Have I forgotten? Do I need to walk the land only hearing MY own heartbeat? Sounds like another story coming in strongly. Unlocked! Thanks for all of your support!
The story if a Mom trying to keep the bridge static when it has become dynamic… A chicflik of a story perhaps? I liked it very deeply.