--
Remothering: A Need but not an Antidote
I am writing the poem before the words
while the words are still arriving.
I am holding the crying babies
and the crying inner children,
both as they choke on the air
on its way out of them.
I am raging while my rage
is festering quietly,
and even that feels ripples
that are cascades and horizons
and cliffs and creaky floors
and places from childhoods
spilling into adulthoods
before you feel older.
You’re waiting to feel older;
checking your phone’s calendar instead
of some frozen inner clock;
telling yourself to let clocks have the quirk
of
flashing unmarked
whenever the wind or the snowfall
knocks out the power.
Legs are braided
arms are cradling
chin touching forehead
tears giving away inner states.
Expanding then shrinking
sighing then heaving;
wanting to be there and stopping.
Tenderness soothes hesitation to show
glimpses of remothering.
Shards really; left scattered on the same
floors that you walked
through barefoot and uncarefully.
Other hips than your mothers
offered other forms of nourishment,
and still do.
Other lullabies were sung
while another’s hips swayed and held you,
and their burdens did not become your burdens.
Their stories have not all been told;
and yours they trust haven’t either.
Get lost in their landing pad.
Salve is being made from childhoods
and mothers that still wound.
Ripples upon ripples
traveling outside of them and us
and them with us.