“Like Hitchcock’s Norman Bates”

by Shahé Mankerian

Mother doesn’t know, and she won’t remember.

I’m driving erratically to the memory care center.

 

Slow down. We don’t want the police to stop us.

From the rearview mirror, tension wrinkles appear

 

on her forehead. Daddy’s innocent, She mumbles.

Truth be told, I am wearing a brown suit like Father.

 

She reaches for the imaginary kitchen drawer, opens it,

and grips a handle. I’ll just take Daddy’s knife—

 

Maybe she fears Father took too many Sunday drinks

and locked her in the closet. Maybe she hears sirens.

 

I make a slow left into a driveway. I will kill him,

she grins and stabs the leather of my headrest.

CONTRIBUTOR’S STATEMENT:

Each of these poems explores the fragile space where memory, fear, and survival intersect, particularly under the weight of mental disarray and inherited trauma. In “Like Hitchcock’s Norman Bates,” I confront the unraveling of a mother’s mind, where dementia blurs the boundaries between past and present, safety and danger—a portrait of a caretaker trapped in an unpredictable narrative. In writing [it], I attempt to document the quiet ways survival manifests: a steering wheel gripped tighter, a hand held in an alley, a knife sold off after the final act. These are small, human gestures inside larger stories of disorientation and despair.