Click
curled up on the damp kitchen floor
bare feet on the cool linoleum
arms wrapped around her knees in a makeshift embrace,
she rests in a pool of tears thirty-four years in the making
such sadness spurs from the stark reality of choice
and symptoms of insanity have become the inner voice
but i’m dancing.
“be a happy mommy,” writes my six year old self
barely able to construct the letters on the yellow construction paper
with a blue crayon.
i feel alone in this house when your insides are pricked with pain,
and your outsides are frazzled and folding in fear
i am lost in your world because
i feel so much joy,
so much novelty in naivety, wild and free;
but then i see you there, on that floor,
and i am forced to confront an oppressive and
onerous past that is not mine.
or is it?
your mother was wicked, twisted, and cruel.
she never noticed that you are such jewel.
she shut you out of her life, such a fool.
but this is not my doing, my darling.
so I keep dancing, but i hold back.
for in this purgatory of lead and light i am stuck.
i want to make you smile,
i want to be the best that i can be;
but I fear that my acceptance and delight
only highlight your misery.
so i fold, too.
the weight of your turmoil sits on my shoulders.
it now belongs to me.
for only so long can i carry before i crash.
spiraling quickly into the murky abyss of this thing
we call life.
sadness and self-defeat are all that we know to be true:
hatred and anger and disappointment and sting
but that is the lie we tell ourselves, mom.
don’t hang up the phone this time—
hear the words i need to say
you are always too quick to dismiss me with a click.
we have skeletons lingering, yes, we do
perhaps they are deathly and ghostly and horrible
but notice their strength:
despite all, when the fragile flesh peels away, they still stand tall;
they are natural, and supportive
they bend and do not break.
can we honor the bone-deep strength that is you and me?
don’t hang up the phone.
i know we have brewed turbulent storms
that have wreaked havoc,
that have flowed and ebbed and flowed once more,
but stand in the eye and feel the pressure drop,
breath in the sweet air of stillness,
and notice how the destruction changes
when you are no longer standing in the middle
of the winds that try to wipe us out.
don’t look back at the shattered glass,
instead notice the flowers dancing in the sunlight before you.
here come the rainbows and bumbling bees.
can we stand in the eye for a moment more?
don’t hang up the phone.
i need to say that i love you,
and that i need you in my life;
but your anger seems to be cell-deep
and it feels like it is always directed towards me.
you are convinced—
that i don’t appreciate you, that i try to replace you,
that i deny you, that i despise you.
but the truth is that you are the mirror in which i look
and see reflections of all that i wished for that never will be.
it’s heartbreaking
don’t you see?
don’t hang up the phone.
i’ve worked tirelessly to change my life,
yes,
i’ve transformed from sad and broken child
into the kind of adult i most needed,
it’s really wild.
and the truth is, i need you.
but there is no room for endless sadness and pain,
only space for twirling in the rain,
and making lemons into lemonade.
please, don’t hang up that phone.
for in this life there is beauty in the agony—
it reminds us that we are alive.
we are capable, and compassionate, and can thrive
when we pull ourselves up out of the dirt
and grow towards the sunlight.
so when i sit on the floor,
crinkled and crumpled and utterly collapsed,
i notice my daughter dancing to her own tune.
i straighten myself up and the thought comes to mind:
“be a happy mommy.”
and i smile.
Click.
