(Press the play button above and below to watch my short films: mother’s insides day & your mother here…)

Manta Ray is All Right

On the eve of her first Mother’s Day she dreamt she was trapped in the supplies closet at the local elementary school.

She couldn’t find her bicycle—her means of escape—the green Manta Ray with the three speed stick shift on the crossbar.

She heard her baby crying from a distance—echoey and shrill. She couldn’t find her cell phone, and now without her bike she’d miss the Greyhound bus out of town.

There was a jostling at the closet door. She intuited it was the President of her Homeowner’s Association coming to release her to give her the New Mother of the Year Award.

The crying was deafeaning industrial noise—whirs, metallic clangs, and grinding.

The door lock clicked.

The Greyhound bus roared by crushing her Manta Ray bicycle lying in the street.

The crying never stopped.

“Mother is faceless so far up in the dark.
Just her torso glows,
and the color around her takes on the design
of a falling leaf, grey-yellow plaid.”

— Terese Svoboda / “The Root of Mother is Moth”