Tonight’s Episode of “Remember When?”

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to

the only comedy show where the jokes

forget themselves mid-sentence.

I’m the wheelchair-bound warm-up act,

forty-four, paralysed,

and prone to the occasional involuntary fireworks display,

and Mum is the headliner

with a brain full of unplugged lamps.

-

She shuffles past my bed,

testing my name like a password

she half-remembers from a dream.

Some days it unlocks the room.

Other days she promotes me

to “that kind young woman,”

because apparently immobility

reads as good manners.

-

Above the TV,

my brother’s photo hangs smug.

Mum watches it the way you watch

a balloon slip from a child’s hand—

that slow lift,

those traitor wings flapping,

caught for a heartbeat

in her unraveling harvest

before wriggling free

through yet another hole in the net.

-

The dreamcatcher beside him sags,

and I swear I can see

the things it trapped for me:

-

Mum teaching me to braid my hair

though my fingers shook like loose wiring.

Dad spinning her in the kitchen

like he’d never leave.

Mum cursing the washing machine

in three languages,

all of them sinful.

Me at seven, eating bread dough raw

because I misunderstood “treat yourself.”

Her grip on my hand in the ambulance,

telling me nothing bad

gets permanent residency in this family.

The look she gave the neurologist

who recited inevitability,

as if she could tear his diagnosis

in half with her teeth.

Dad’s last laugh rolling across the house

like a coin that fell

somewhere you can’t reach.

My brother promising to visit

“next summer,”

three summers ago.

Mum slipping extra sugar in my tea,

arming me for battle

with sweetness alone.

-

All of it tangled

in that tired little web,

still holding on

even though the universe

keeps pitching stones through it.

-

Evenings: stand-up reruns.

She laughs early,

in the wrong places,

and I sit beside her,

silent,

letting punchlines fall into my lap

like stray seeds

I don’t know how to plant.

-

Bath time is prophecy.

Her hands trembling

as she lowers me in,

steam curling around us

like a ghost checking its watch.

Sometimes her gaze goes blank—

a stage light blown—

and I feel the future arrive:

quiet, punctual, merciless.

-

A day she’ll wander in,

find my body still,

submerged in water long cold,

long forgotten,

slumped in its own silence,

and squint, annoyed,

trying to figure out

which neighbour

dumped this strange,

stinking thing

in her tidy bathroom.

-

Ladies and gentlemen—

what a hoot.

.