Thursday, April 21, 2011
[share]
who can do this? what is too much/too little? i want what's mine. and then some. i've learned that children are incapable, really, of doing this. i've learned that i can close like a frozen flower/mistakenly weeded out/dessicated petals/roots still buried under the fertile earth/hidden by leaves. roots entwined with big towering trees/not quite choking me off. my share my offering is rust/ashes from my father's funeral pyre/love songs/my simple intentions/a daily prayer only i ever see/the portion of/the piece of pie/the creation of the whole/holy/slash/burn/divided words/broken into puzzle pieces, my mind and heart/the missing feathers of a cowbird/a contribution that cannot be measured by any means/God's means/release from suffering in a small gesture, a mother's fingertips in his hair
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[share]
ReplyDeleteI have learned to redefine what’s mine…in the bathroom (not my time), in the bed (not my space), fingers in my food, hands down my shirt, feet pressed to my lips for kisses on demand. Oh, the uncoupling of her body from mine. It is not just birth that makes this happen, but a thousand tiny pullings and tuggings – a sheet between my back and her cold feet, a swipe at jam-covered fingers clinging along my edges. I disentangle fingers and arms, set a wobbly body down and walk away, nudge a tiny bit of space between us when I can. I feel pawed and elbowed, poked and jostled and stretched so thin I can’t breathe anymore.
And yet, I draw her into me in the darkness, into the space of my body where there is no break between us. Chest to chest, legs twined about my waist, soft still-fuzzy head nestled beneath my chin. I listen to her breathing, in her back, her belly, her pale pink chest. I know she is not mine, not really. This sharing is so tenuous, so incredibly brief, a flash of magic in the mundane.
Share?
ReplyDeleteReally?
This word woke me up last night from my Nyquil induced sleep. I heard myself say it at a table a million and a half years ago when my little girl still lived off my body. "No one likes to share. Why do we insist on making our kids do it?" I sounded like a jackass saying other peoples words, making no sense and getting the point wrong.
But really, share? Let me just own, possess, reclaim, redo, reconstruct, reinvent the person that existed long before this body grew another body inside it and produced a being, whole and complete, but that needed everything I could offer just to live. Let me get back to having myself all to myself long enough to stretch out my arms and give you all of my heart. My infinite heart.
I will.
I promise.
Just let me.
[share]
ReplyDeletegrief, sadness, loss, confusion, anger, memories.
blur, haze, forgetfulness, regret.
ideas, thoughts, feelings, futures.
phrases, words, dreams, photos.
beginnings, ends.
selves, others.
emptiness, togetherness.
I want to give her everything, and yet I know better than that. When I give it all away, I won't have anything left to give. Our clumsy, enthusiastic dance. Where is my bottom line? How to trust my threshold in the free fall? How to trust her's? In one hour she wants to hold my hand, won't let it go. In the next hour she runs from me, shrugging off my hand as it reaches for her's. As she bursts ahead of me, once I know she is safe, I look at these hands, my hands, and I wonder who they will hold now?
ReplyDeletelonely lonely bad news moon on my shoulder
ReplyDeleteI should've been here before, earned this familiarity
I miss their tiny voices those are voices I keep locked up
unafraid of the deep dark well of lonely
I'm afraid of the deep dark well of lonely
voices here are so long ago. but here they are.
couldn't have seen this thing coming
a virus dividing us from each other so thoroughly
I am nostalgic for the America I used to hate.
I am nostalgic for the me I used to not know
I am nostalgic for the simplicity of the smell of my baby's head
when I could say that there was so much good in the world
and I could mean it.
but not now.