Morphine Ghost
Mother says the voices are in my head.
December 2, 2003
The page has been waiting for your particular mistake.
But sometimes she responds to them.
She'll stop in the middle of washing dishes, tilt her head toward the empty corner of the kitchen, and whisper, "Not yet." If I ask who she's talking to, she sighs and reminds me that my medication makes me project conversations onto other people. But she always waits for an answer before she speaks again. She nods. She apologizes. Once she even laughed at a joke I never heard. When I repeated the punchline she claimed I'd imagined, her face went white. She asked me never to say those words again.
I tried proving it to myself. I sat in the hallway with my bedroom door cracked open while Mother watched television downstairs. Right at 11:17, the voices started. Faint. Too many to count. I covered my ears, but I could still hear Mother from the living room.
"I know," she said.
A pause.
"I've been keeping him occupied."
Another pause.
Then, quieter than I've ever heard her speak, "Please... just give me a little more time."
The house went silent after that. Mother came upstairs carrying a bowl of soup she hadn't made, set it on my nightstand, and told me not to answer anyone who knew my name before she taught it to them.