CNF: My Mother Says
by Claudio Perinot
I push the switch and the bulb bursts. A short circuit. My father says what happened?, what did I do? I tell him I wanted to switch on the light in the corridor and it burst. My father, in the dark, starts explaining why these things happen. He says there are candles in the kitchen. My mother sits in the dark. She doesn’t move, doesn’t say a thing. She waits for something to happen, for someone to explain. My father rambles on, about the candles to get in the kitchen. He tells me to wait for him to get the candles and gets up feeling his way towards where he thinks the kitchen is. My mother sits silently. I can just make out the greyish outline of her wig as I pull out my mobile and touch a key. The little screen lights up and I see my father moving around the long side of the table, ordering me to wait for the candles that he’ll just fetch from the kitchen. Apparently neither of them has seen the light. I find the mains switch and put it back up. The little flat lights up again. My mother smiles quietly. She’s still seated in the same way and looking in the same direction. My father is surprised, then collects and preaches that I should have waited for him, he was so close to getting the candles, after all.
My father wants me to take care of my mother after he’s gone. He wants me to promise. He wants me to declare. He wants me to swear. He wants me to put it down in black ink, in front of a notary. He wants it to be legally binding. He wants to be sure that my mother won’t be left alone, after he’s gone, wants to know that she’ll always have someone by her side. He wants to make sure. He wants me to promise. After all, I am the nearest son and it’s no use moving down to my brother’s, all that distance, and even though maybe he would have more space, my mother would not be able to cope with the new location and new habits and all. No, much better here. That’s why he wants me to promise. To declare. To swear.
My mother listens. Silently. At times she tries to get a word in sideways, but my father doesn’t seem to hear. At times, when I see she really wants to say something, I stop my father by pulling his arm and making him see my mother wants to say something. She usually begins confidently, then soon afterwards stumbles on a word or two she can’t remember, and stops to recollect things, trying hard to pinpoint the word, the meaning, the idea. That’s when she usually asks my father for help. My father, let in again, starts off on another run of ideas and principles and thoughts, forgetting her along the way. She retreats and sighs. She sits again, listening. He talks. He says he wants to make sure that my mother won’t suffer when he’s gone. I must promise.
She’s letting go. My mother. My mother’s letting go. Quietly. My father. My father’s hanging on. Desperately.
Claudio Perinot is a bilingual disabled teacher. He holds a degree in English and Spanish Language and Literature (Univ. of Venice). His poems have appeared in Eleven Bulls, Theviewfromhere, and Cricket Online Review. He was longlisted in the 2021 Briefly Write Poetry Prize. His research on the Eliot – Verdenal friendship has been published in Annali di Cà Foscari, ANQ and South Atlantic Review, and is often cited in studies on T.S. Eliot. He lives in Italy with his wife and two sons.
See what happens when you click below.
What surprising, fascinating stuff can you tell us about the origin, drafting, and/or final version of “My Mother Says”? That day had dogged me ever since. After a lifetime together, my father had told me flatly that he did not trust me and that he needed some kind of guarantee to convince him that I would take care of my mother. The accusation was a heavy burden. That thick, compressed clot of memory had increased the emotional pressure on me as I witnessed my parents’ slow descent into disease. To relieve the tension, I turned to writing. As I recollected the scene, I discovered it was etched deep and clear. The sudden return of the lights in the flat had been like the flash of a powerful camera. Everything, even the smallest of details, had been fixed indelibly. I began to describe the experience. The flow started, sustained by my pent-up resentment. I wrote confidently and quickly, trying to keep up with the unleashed thoughts as they sped out, trying to miss nothing. In the end, the result was completely different from anything I had written before. It sprawled over the page, like prose. Yet, it had such a distinct emotional charge that I was certain it was the draft of a potential poem. I read it again and again, revising and improving. Excluding the removal of some unnecessary distractions, and a few minor corrections, it did not require extensive reworking. At every reading, however, it felt as if there was a hidden layer of meaning somewhere. To find it, I reread the poem repeatedly, to the point of reliving the scene. As I listened to my father’s desperate voice again, the missing piece of the puzzle was right in front of me, staring at me. It was the real subject of the discussion. It was my mother, who sat quietly through the argument although it revolved around her. And when, at last, she wanted to say something, the words came out mixed up and incomprehensible. She was unable to convey the obscure reasoning of her deranged mind. I wondered what she thought, what her point of view was. Did she agree with my father? Was she more lenient? More optimistic? Her opinion counted more than anything else but it was unknown. I could see it clearly now. The core of the matter was not what my father had said. It was what my mother had said, and that was lost forever. I finished the revision. I was painfully aware that it had been one of the darkest moments of my life. I wrote the title and sealed the final version of that day.
Check out the write-up of the journal in The Writer.
Matter Press recently released titles from Meg Boscov, Abby Frucht, Robert McBrearty, Tori Bond, Kathy Fish, and Christopher Allen. Click here.
Matter Press is now offering private flash fiction workshops and critiques of flash fiction collections here.
Submissions
Poetry, creative nonfiction, and fiction/prose poetry submissions are now closed. The reading period for standard submissions opens again September 15, 2025. Submit here.
Upcoming
12/15 • Isabelle Ness
12/22 • Catherine Bai
12/29 • Stephan Viau
01/05 • Allison Blevins
01/12 • Justin Ocelot
01/19 • Yejun Chun
01/26 • Mathieu Parsy
02/02 • Robert McBrearty
02/09 • Sarah Daly
02/16 • Wayne Lee
02/23 • Terena Elizabeth Bell
03/02 • Michael Mirolla
03/09 • Nicholas Claro
03/16 • TBD
03/23 • TBD
03/30 • TBD