When she talks on the phone

It is eight in the morning.
She dials a number on the good ol’ telephone
to talk to somebody, presumably
a bestfriend from highschool or
somebody close enough to understand
or tolerate.

A monologue comes from her mouth:
iiiiihow she anticipates the reprimand
iiiiiof her obsessively compulsive cousin
iiiiito my cousin when the latter allegedly
iiiiialtered the computer’s settings so that
iiiiithe former could not access the internet,

something they believe could have been done
by a girl who only knew of
virtual restaurants and pet care,
the closest thing to tinkering is the
turning on and shutting down of the computer.

It does not matter,
iiiii(she could really have done it anyway, after all, she used to pinch my sister when they were kids)
except

A vicious sneer accompanies the words spoken,
a conviction to the claim not because of its truth,
but by wanting it to be true,
thereby implicating she who may be innocent,
or in bleak terms, not yet a suspect.

But because she knows best (as I was told),
I believed in everything good
and its practice

despite the evil She hangs up the phone and plants a wet kiss on my cheek to bid goodbye.

Sometimes, I wish she is not my mother.