[before]

before I was small. unproven. a tight ball of vast ocean wound up. an innocent. a would-be murderer. very opinionated. very weak. unbelievably strong.

before I was certain, assured. I saw the point in the distance and I moved toward it with an unstoppable flow. the mountains came closer. the sky tumbled at my feet. my insides opened and closed freely, and at my will. I would sit, quietly, for hours at a time. my skin embraced and absorbed the cool and the heat like a chameleon.

before I would sweat when appropriate, smelled of honey or sweet spice, mint or cardamom. slept with the sun if I wanted. cavorted under the moon as I saw fit. before I was one body, one mind, one savior and saint. one human being not doing. one human being creating the whole world. I was free, so I thought, to come and to go. I watched fall and summer and spring go by. I never saw the mother bird in her nest.

now? I am weak. unbuckled and laid open by love. fumbling. stuttering. losing my words. growing my hair. unshaved. I stink. the moments of silence are few and far apart. this morning, this darkness, is full of possibility. a fruit I have ripened and gone bad on the vine. with no one to pick me I rot in the dirt. I feed the dirt. I give myself back to the earth. I am pregnant with the whole world inside me. I am time itself, again. I am whole in my before and now. I am there. I am here. I am a star inside a star. a dream within a painting. a shelter within a downpour.

deep

Exhausted. Body aches. Moving, sorting, cleaning all day. It started at IKEA. Need I say more? Well, I will. I am surrounded by things. Things to do. Things to put away. Things needing. Things wanting. Mouths to feed and bottoms to wipe. Stories to write. I am deep in this home. Deep in my head. I don't even know what's out there. I don't want to know. When I finally fall into bed at night, I lay there and think about the ocean. Blood of the earth. I send reiki and healing prayers. I go deep into the healing and feel more than I am ready to feel. Sleep.

[deep]

I am in over my head/out of my head/the green tables the white foam flower the dissonance/I travel a distance to get here/destination unknown/strange life gets stranger/a former coworker/a doppelganger/you hurt my feelings with your words/with your silence/violent/my heart bruised/caged without a key/travel without piano/delicate nerve endings/tips/its not all black and white there is red/the brown of his eyes/the dark of his chin/a bright blue awning, flags wave singing my prayers/there is so much to feel/I know myself/I know the withdrawal signs, the exile of the self/the longing for connection and the fear of overscheduling/not meaning to be shallow, a creekbed full of smooth rocks/start your own band and call it/off

[need]

[need]

i am only human. and i need to be loved. just like everybody else. is there something special here? the nightmare came alive for me. the neurological. emotional island. i'm out to sea, cast out, floating. pirated. searching for treasure wherever i can find it. the ruby in the sunrise. cannot get it. together. light as a feather. stiff as a board. dead in some ways, more alive than ever in others. i was given such bad news. i need to learn. i need to create. i need space. i need to create space. i need space to create, to keep up the pace. it's the whole human race i'm running. i need a meeting. i need you too. and i need you to. understand. give me space. let me. allow. deepen your breath. settle. go down. get out of your head and into your heart. my need is great. everybody needs a little...ventilator. i need to clean my ducts and get my ducks lined up. need, weed, read, seed. need to reach into my core. some more. my little boy is my world, and that's the way i want it to be. need it to be. an outpouring of love, a reaching and a holding on. squeezing til all the tears have pushed themselves out. i need to be empty. for the bliss to pour in, for the sunlight to shine out. i need rest. to be my best. to open the chest and let the spirits fly.

Spill

I'm spilling out all over. All that I could contain inside is no longer tucked neatly inside. It is my guts and my love and my aching and my fire. Right there on the table for everyone to see.

In the world, I feel you spilling out all over too. The sea of humanity is almost too much for me to handle. Your life and your struggles and your ugliness and your beauty. Driving around in the gas fueled cars, walking and sweating on the hot pavement. I see you and feel you in me. It makes me want to run home and hide but really all I can do is take a deep breath and let us be in this together.

There is so much falling away. So much dizzy, wild shifting. We don't know what is going on. But old, old stuff seeps out. Faster than we can even process it. I don't understand it. I bet you don't either.

But something new is coming. All I can do is trust that.

[spill]

i often wonder when my son will read a book on his own and when he will desire to spell his notes himself? and i wonder if he'll pronounce it "spill" and adopt our hometowns accent. will he defy my covert NY accent? will he co-opt david's midwestern drawl, that is peppered with hick influences. pen becomes pin. laura / lara (lah-rah).

i kind of want him to have a central texas drawl. i've totally embraced this town as mine own. i am very amorous of austin and texas proud. sam having an accent would be icing on the cake. but i think spell becoming spill isn't indigenous to this area and i am romanticizing having a southern accent. with spill could come offensive iterations.

projection, my spill, should not flow and when it does it needs quick action, to be soaked up.

--anonymous mama

Swing!

Miles loves the swings. We started taking him to the little park near our house as soon as the weather turned nice in early March. It was the first nice day after an entire month of snow, three feet or more on the ground. We couldn't wait to be in the outdoors, together as a family. Miles had just started to be a good sitter then, and the swing seemed incredibly new and fancy to him.

Now, even when they could be old hat, he loves them even more. He is getting braver in those little bucket swings, bending his body forward and nearly tipping out if we aren't careful. He loves it when we duck our heads out of the way and pretend he chopped them off as he swung past.

One of the sets of swings near our house has a picnic table nearby. Depending what time of day I happen down there, big kids are sitting at the picnic table smoking pot and drinking coffee, which seems like a strange combination to me. While I wish they wouldn't smoke their pot in the park where young babies swing, sometimes I feel incredibly tempted to just walk over and ask for a puff.

How many years has it been since I smoked pot? Wouldn't it be amazing to play on the swings afterward? Who am I kidding. I would likely fall off the swing and be too stoned to care as I lay there on the playground.

Instead of joining them, I just turn about and head for another location, maybe another set of swings, where Miles can feel the wind whipping back his fluffy hair. When I watch him enjoying the swings like that, I realize that these are the moments parents live for. Small, seemingly mundane things like a day on the swings can feel so, so miraculous when it's YOUR baby giggling his face off at the feeling of weightlessness.

Chocolate

I went to about 5 different grocery stores before Easter searching for Cadbury mini eggs. Nobody had them! I am telling you, I drove all over Pittsburgh. Turns out, all the mini eggs were stockpiled at the ghetto Giant Eagle in a shady neighborhood near our house. I popped in there to buy some stuff for a road trip and was affronted with $.99 bags of the mini eggs. I bought 5.

Then I hid them from my husband, knowing he eats as many of them as I do. Which is a lot. I've been doing my best to ration them out, to only eat a few per day. But this has been one of those weeks. I have been eating so much of the chocolate. I just cracked into my last bag. What will I do til next spring?

To try reserving the precious mini eggs, I've been supplementing my chocolate cravings with Trader Joe's dark truffle chocolate bars. I force myself to eat only one square at a time when things are rough. I put the screaming, napless baby in a jumperoo or in his room and sink into the sofa, slowly enjoying my one square of dark, dark chocolate while I breathe and count to 10. Or 11.

What is it about dark chocolate that has made it so valuable to me in these 9 months of parenthood? I honestly don't think a single day has passed where I haven't had at least one square. If a day did pass, I'm sure it was an unpleasant one. I guess that makes me pretty addicted. I'll take it. I haven't had any beer or wine to speak of since I got pregnant in 2008. And I smoked my last doobie around then (two wonderful puffs to last a lifetime...).

I think I convince myself that I need and deserve the dark chocolate because I abstain from all of these other pleasures, like caffeine. To be quite honest, I greatly prefer this to even a good Belgian wheat beer with dinner. If chocolate is my new vice, I'd say I'm not doing too badly.

sleep

I haven't had sleep in days. 90 minutes here and there...that barely counts. I kind of feel like I could shake the person who invented the phrase "sleeps like a baby." sometimes I hold other people's babies and those babies just become asleep. POOF! Asleep. No marching up and down the stairs. No nursing while an angry baby digs a hole in my upper arm. No pleading with Jesus for the baby to just become asleep. These other babies just enter that state and stay there. It seems like magic to me.

Sometimes I wonder if my son will ever take after his father and become a champion sleeper. Corey's party trick in college (and beyond) was his ability to fall asleep on anybody's couch, no matter how rowdy the party or gathering. Corey can sleep for 14 hours in a row if you let him. He sleeps through thunder and alarm clocks and...crying babies. I hate him a little for this.

Miles sleeps through nothing. Except sometimes car rides. But today, I am too tired to take him on one of those car rides to put him out. I fear I will run over a bicyclist or drive through a red light.

It's been 9 months since I've had sleep. To look at it that way, think about how long that really is, makes me feel humble. I know I'll sleep again someday because Miles will eventually move out of the house, right? But man, I need a nap.

Snacks

We're heading to the zoo and it is law that when you go to the zoo, you better bring snacks. Ugh. Dirty zoo hands – inevitable – touching food, touching lips. I am so bad at packing snacks. I usually forget – rushing out the door, trying to find the keys, lugging all the stuff – and snacks just don't quite happen. My kid looks longingly at other kids' snacks until their mom (who didn't forget) offers some.

I had a friend who hated the word “snack.” It creeped her out, made her skin crawl. I would tease her by using the word way too often. She also hated “goopy.” Pairing the two – goopy snacks – was even better. Snacks are often goopy. Especially when those little zoo hands are touching them.

So here I am, writing instead of packing the snacks - attracted to the word and thoughts but not the doing. I'll do anything other than pack snacks. I mean, what do people even eat?

Grasp

I have been hungry non-stop since I gave birth to my second daughter four months ago. I am a floating head, detached from its body – chomping hungrily at the air. I grasp for something – anything – to fill what is missing...which,I guess, is my self. I grasp for my youth and the days when I would meditate for hours on end. I grasp for the beautiful moments happening now – the sight of my daughters laughing at each other or the soft, warm back of the baby's neck- things I want to hold on to because they are leaving me way too fast. I grasp onto my fantasies about the future – my future fit body, our future financial stability – these things coming right around the corner...right?

I grasp for the earth like I did at age 17 when washed away in a flash flood. I grasped at the grasses on the river bank as the water carried me away, my hands slipping off each time. Just moving so fast. I swear it was an angel or an act of God that pulled me up eventually and landed me on a fallen tree. And I survived.

Now the waters move me and I don't know where. But I am hungry and lost and really all I want is to feel myself in my body again. Right here, right now – feel the fullness of this moment and feel sated.

[buy]

Well, love is something you can't buy. My son's love. My love. Never, my love. A new gender. Mind-bender. Mama's worried about enough. Not enough toys. Kisses. Love. More. Let's go shopping. Let's waste. A little girl grows up in Vietnam, too poor to even have one toy. My son has a million trucks. A million. No exaggeration. They overflow the house. They make great projectiles for fits of anger. When the shoe fits, buy it. What else is there to say about what is bought? A trade. The skin. Will my son ink his skin, will he buy a house, will he buy sex, what of his talents will he be able to sell? It's a weird world, an even weirder economy. Not sure if I can communicate all that I have seen in such limited time and space. Not sure I want to. I buy. You buy. We're all buyers. Let us beware. I can't be sold a bill of goods, that's good. Whatever the doctors say, I don't buy it. Cellular, cells, division and multiplication. When Cancer enters your house, you wish you would buy it away. It's just another microbe, here for the ride. Beggars can't be buyers. Cellar door, the most beautiful phrase in the English language, and we don't even have one.

*CURSE*

*CURSE*! you know, picasso's painting can be fixed. there are brilliant, dedicated, talented folks who have masterful techniques to restore paintings. but somehow it is thought that this is some sort of tragedy. really? why is this a *CURSE* news item? it's shocking, why? because the *CURSE* market deems the painting less valuable. because cause someone bought it for millions of dollars and now it can't be sold. the market *CURSE* devalues art by commodifying it in the first place.

*CURSE* those bumper stickers that declare "freedom isn't free". really? oh, okay. well it might surprise you that i agree. i do. freedom takes *CURSE* tax dollars. the freedom for you to drive that *CURSE* gas guzzler (with commercial plates), with gas at a reasonable $2.75 per gallon, on roads that traverse seemingly endlessly... is paid in part by my "sacrificing" a portion of my brilliant, dedicated, talented work to my country. *CURSE* your hypocrisy.

*CURSE* I'm slow writer.

jennifer

curse

Curse you for almost hitting my frickin car when I have the right of way. Curse you for tail-gating and almost running into my frickin car. Curse you for hitting my frickin car on the freeway at what must’ve been 60 miles an hour. Curse you for the slow-mo what-the-f-ness of getting rammed into and having no idea what the frick was going on for what seemed like minutes, while alone in the car on the freeway, with things flying from behind, glass breaking, doors jamming, air bags popping, horns blaring, sirens starting, traffic stopping, cars scattering like billiard balls. Curse you for making me a spectacle as I crawled out of what was left of my frickin car, hoping it wasn’t about to burst into flames. Curse you for making me borrow the cell phone of the driver of the vehicle immediately behind me, who was yelling hysterically about how she was hurt. Curse you for giving me whiplash. Curse you for killing my car. Curse you for the years of driving in the meantime during which I curse every driver that gets close to me. Curse you.

--Julie Carter

[curse]

Dark hair, native soil where the blood of slaves, the blood of ancestors mingles with the dirt. The blood of hanged men. The milk of mothers, of chicken's blood and red dust on the ground. What is it when a woman bleeds? I've bled once too many times, a conception ill-conceived, an idea half-formed, the fear is that I can't do it again. The fear is that I'm cursed. It's just who I am. Fuck.

That kind of curse.

The pain of being a woman, of always being on a cycle. Spinning. Blood as thick as thieves. The night came and you were stolen away from me. Quiet as cat's feet, clawing me from the inside. A stream, the hearse, another lullaby in verse. What could be worse? To endure this course, this curse of course. Where intercourse could mean divorce. Or devotion.

I'm stuck. Not stuck. I'm fluid. The fluid of ages, of women's wiseblood, the genetic manifestation of all those mothers and fathers. The being inside me who never became. Who was and who then wasn't. What was the agreement? Where do any of us ever start, or end?

[resolve]

A carpet cleaner, a New Year, a new clear spot. Fists balled, breath held, heavy sighs and the eyes close. All kinds of music, all kinds of love, all kinds of light and dark. The scripted voice on the radio, the natural voice of my son calling the balloon on the ceiling a cloud, enjoying the cadence.

I hear songs and stories of death. Songs and rhythms of life. Tide at my toes. Cold wind under my shirt. Cold wind in my lungs. Cold fingers and a Chinese satin shirt. These are the scenes from the first day. The lights get too hot. The polarities, the axis, it all dissolves when my eyes close. And reappears upon waking. Upon opening. Upon a spontaneous kiss from my son.

Weaving across the playground, waving his arms in an imaginary tunnel. Songs half sung. Traditional food. The tradition of coffee first thing. First things. A handstand at age two. Calling cartoons "raccoon." First trip to the ocean. First time on a horse. First music put together. First puzzle solved. First fright. A picture of a lion in a book. The death of a friend against the stark backdrop of my son's joy. My first forays into Real Life.

Even auspicious beginnings must come to an end.  Where is the deep contemplation, the somber reflection, the warm clear pool, the dimples and the bright blue eyes that can only be here for so long. Even the lotuses are dried up and gone this week. Out of this winter, out of 01 01 10, I resolve to resonate. I resolve to bloom. I resolve to sing a complete song, not just half-recalled verses and choruses. I resolve to teach and be taught. To write. To make it right. To love.