Pierrot

I woke up and found myself in March again.

Again, scratching my head, with the wringing of my hands over the Ides. I slip gently, gently into the bath of fond remembrance, lukewarm now as time passes.

I feel the hollow, it spreads from my throat down to my heart and it will congeal there until the Ides. My jaw tight with the filaments of shock that reverberate, reminding me of my sister hushing me in a sterile, sterile room. My mother looking first blue, then small and pale, like Pierrot.

When I was younger, I flipped, fascinated, through my mother's photo albums. Looking at a person who was but also was not her. I stumbled across that young woman covered in white face and a black skull cap.She's doing her best Sarah Berhardt, her eyes rolling wistfully to the ceiling somewhere in the 70s. 

And I remember how her eyes lit as she told me of Pierrot and how she loved him. 

I loved those photos, my mother's face drawn but full of life.

And here I am, looking in the mirror. I think about the Ides and I think about the sad clowns in the world, and I cannot help but smile. I laugh even.