XP

Joey Damiano

June 29, 2026

I watch Ma from the couch
I squint through the smudges
on the sliding glass door

she’s out there by herself
in the darkness
unsteady on her feet
blue black body
swaying in the backyard

the sun’s gone down
it’s hard to judge
what she’s up to back there
something’s not right

I sigh
press pause on the PlayStation controller
set the controller down on the rickety black Ikea table
Push off the couch
my avatar on the TV screen frozen in time
mid-stride through a desolate cityscape
shattered windows
burned out cars

I see the back of my avatar’s head, hair brown like mine
he’s dressed in scuffed battle armor
that I salvaged off a dead raider
he’s aiming an automatic rifle at someone off camera

I hate IRL killing and death
but blowing apart drug-addled raiders
in Fallout 4
makes me feel powerful
and in control
if only for a few hours at a time

I go outside
to stand with Ma in the wind
a gust sprays dirt in my eye
I approach her
my hands out and ready to grab her
to catch her if she falls again
I won’t waste another night
sitting in an ER waiting room
to wait for a haggard med tech
to set a cast on one of her
brittle limbs

whatchoo doin’? Ma says as I watch her teeter
her eyes see through me
bent cigarette dangling from her mouth
I hear the flick, flick
a brief, quivering bright flame near her face,
then dark

hurry up, I say

why? she asks, grinning
I don’t understand what’s so funny
about her current state of inebriation
we’ve been down this road many times

I strain my eyes to look at her
fried chicken grease
stains all down the front of
her gray sweatshirt

she shivers, mumbles, hou dung (Cantonese: very cold)

I contain the rage
I save the
cutting things I want to say to her
for tomorrow
because it hurts her best to tell her
when she’s sober

in shadow,
I see the wind rip through Ma’s hair
whipping her overgrown bangs,
a grimy Medusa
her hair’s longer than usual, a ragged pixie cut,
she’s overdue for the Chinatown salon

now she hunches forward
her body a question mark
she holds up a cupped hand to block the wind
again, she fumbles with the Bic lighter
flick, flick … flick, flick
her body wavers, made unsteady
by the cocktail of pills and beer

I space out
I think about the game I paused
my avatar guided by a map waypoint for
a side quest
I’m supposed to kill a local warlord
to stop his reign of terror
my reward, increased experience points
a new gun
friendship with digital villagers in a bomb-pocked
wasteland

a way to distract myself from the fact that
I have no main quests in my own life

except to keep Ma alive

in the darkness,
I see a bright flash blooming near her face
I see her eyes squinted shut
one of her bangs catches fire,
the flame reaches six inches above her scalp before
the lighter clicks off and the fire dies,
the air acrid with the smell of burnt hair

I yell,
ask her if she noticed what the fuck just happened
she doesn’t
she smiles, slit-eyed, slurring
oblivious
filth-caked dentures flashing

sucks on the cigarette, the cherry burning brightly

she won’t remember this night
she won’t admit how embarrassed she
is to live like this with her 36-year-old son

my shouts never stop her from
reigniting herself again and again.