motherhood

Good

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just like a baby
my baby curls in to cuddle
her small body
still fits into my lap

i can’t replace the hours we’ve lost
the years we’ve lost
or fill the ache in my heart
for the good i’m trying to do
that doesn’t do me any good

but when her tears creep down?
when she won’t go for a night of fun
because she’s missed me too much,
when the weeks have flooded by
in a pile of work
that i’m so fucking good at
when i can’t just be her mother?

it is too much
and i am five again
just like her
searching for my mother’s arms
to comfort the sadness
that rests so heavily on my soul

January (2012) Daughters

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Isabella

since age two,
in intermittent spurts
you creep downstairs
in the dark hours of morning,
your voice cautious,
Daddy?
(because you know me well enough
to leave me be)

he won’t wake up,
(you are almost nine)
and i send you back up to your room,
telling you that you’re old enough now
to soothe yourself back to sleep

you leave the room sobbing.
i toss and turn
in my already-restless sleep
worrying over the scar i’d created,
a bitter hole in our relationship
you’d remember till you die

when i wake you for school,
you have a happy story
about little Laura and locusts
from the book that soothed you,
fully forgiving me for nighttime selfishness

i think back to my childhood,
how i would have treated my parents
to silence for a day,
pouting in defiance

perhaps you,
insomniac, crazy, loud-mouthed you (me)
are just a little different,
so subtle that i couldn’t catch
your drying tears to see
the beauty of your individual soul
(i see it now,
and i am so proud to be your mama)

Mythili

you are a young woman,
though seven,
you prove time and again
how easily words will come–
you have backtalk and sass
like a teenager
and know just what not to say

one punishment is enough
to teach you a lifelong lesson,
and you take your crone’s hands
and draw pictures
with delicate detail
only mastered by true artists

how you came to be mine,
with your fierce independence
and longing for touch
while simultaneously craving
to be left alone,
will mystify me as you move
into the next step
of your beautiful life.

Riona

you will not speak
at times specified only in
your quiet mind,
a mystery to all of us
who wish to hear your words

i know you hide behind
those dark lashes
a collection of truths
that will someday spill out

now you save your words
for strangers in your first
cookie outings
while we wait
at home, at school,
for the thumb to come out,
for the gentle voice
to roll over our minds
and bring us to the real you.

Nothing Short of Art

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we sit in central citified sun
sipping smoothies and lattes,
munching on freshly baked croissants
and chatting with strangers
on a day so warm it can’t be
the third week of January
(a beauty we all share
as we peel off our winter coats)

they skip alongside on an impromptu adventure,
moving along the zero street,
playing pig and picking out dates
on ovular stamps in concrete.

we enter the train store
and examine the pure wonder
of details so tiny, humans
standing knee-deep in plexiglass water,
monkeys climbing up a fallen-apart billboard,
and fast-moving trains. one declares,
it is nothing short of art

later i pedal into the wind
around the dam and up the hill
until i see the circular beauty of the lake,
and its curvacious path
interweaves me with a hundred pairs of legs,
all taking advantage
of this day like no other

before i am home
i am home,
and can almost forget
the tears whose all night sting
kept my eyes bleeding till morning,
the two dark, cold miles of separation,
and the hollowness of our words
that find their way
into the poems he wishes i wouldn’t write.

September (2011) Daughters

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Mythili

you are still my little girl
though you try to pop out
adult (somewhat crooked) teeth
and blend Spanish and English
easily into your imaginary life

among friends you are a leader
(no tag-along little sister role)
and you wait
so anxiously wait
until you are big enough to ride
Isabella’s bike,
to read Isabella’s stories,
to find the right way to
wake up on early school mornings

in our troop,
you are Magical Mythili,
the perfect name
for the creative artist
born from the
destined-to-be-crone
little baby whose head
turned to see me walk
into the room
forty-eight hours
after birth.

Isabella

all of a sudden
you have decided
that you’re a reader

it is a simple statement,
one you would wash off your back
like the layers of shampoo
you push aside

but to me
watching you read
Laura Ingalls Wilder
just like i used to

it means more than
the thousands of words
filling your brain,
making you mine

Riona

every day a new song
a new dance
a new Spanish phrase
a new smile
from my newly school-aged girl

i was worried.
you know that
or you don’t.
you’re small.
tire easily.
timid.
dependent.

oh so calm and pleasant
the perfect student
who hugs goodbye
a friend
whose name you won’t mention
who shies away from
the video of your
performance at the assembly
who is everything
and more
than i could ever
ask you to be.

Wait

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in your absence
there is nothing but silence
i wait for your return
but the dead air is thick
choking back the guilt
that bubbles up
with work done
nothing left to do but wait

you will pour in
a waterfall cacophony of sound
take every waking moment
to be your exuberant selves
and i will feel a Saturday
that belongs to us
not me

The Big Day

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i don’t want to think
of your new pink backpack,
your hand-me-down uniform,
or your first steps into kindergarten.

wasn’t it just yesterday
that we swung you in the car seat
into the hospital elevator,
calling you Mythili by mistake?

how can we move from birthday
to first day of school in one week?
it’s too much for this old mom,
this worked-through-baby-years mom.

but it will have to be.
tomorrow’s the big day,
the beginning of the endless
letting goes that you and i must face.

August (2011) Daughters

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Riona

Five. FIVE. five…
you wear the pink taffeta dress
(pattern handed down
for fifty years)
a gathered waste,
scalloped pockets and sleeves,
plastic pearls to complete the couture.

you jump in and out of fountains,
climb plastic playground steps,
pretend with perfect attitude
(that encompasses all you are)
to blow the absent candles from your cake

we move from playing with new gifts
on hardwood (you offer me a pillow)
to party number two, where
you surround yourself with
breaking-down children and ask
only that i roast you a marshmallow
in the lightning-flash sky
and circle of warmth

you are five.
you dash to the car in the
pitch-black, too-far-from-city night,
your row of new lip balms in palm,
and before you will sleep,
you divide them evenly amongst sisters,
your generous heart more beautiful
than your perfect pink taffeta dress.

Mythili

it’s been a year, and
baby teeth are gone,
replaced by no-finger-sucking
straight white incisors
that have sent Blankey
to a closeted grave
with their grown-up appearance.

you have school friends now
who you won’t let go.
you know the way down the corridors,
will soon show baby sister,
and, as always,
you speak quite frankly
about the condition of your classroom,
the behavior of other students,
and your ability to stay on task.

how could these two adult teeth
bring deeper wisdom
to the little girl
who, from birth,
could already see the world
in a light
the rest of us can’t see?

Isabella

i find pictures of you
at five, six,
(pudgy cheeks and tiny teeth)
and look into your pale hazels,
your over-freckled cheeks,
hold you against me,
your head now at my shoulder,
and i know
i know
(though i’m afraid to write it now)
you are no longer a little girl.

you are my oldest,
will always be first,
will always move from one stage
to another before them,
will be the one to induce the most fear,
the most intense kind of love,
a kind i cannot describe here
(or to them)
one that is shared from those
moments in our babymoon
to those moments now when
you understand what they don’t,
when you give me the look
a reflection of my expression,
you, a shadow of me
who stands at my shoulder,
ready to grow.

A Sunday Afternoon

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girls pose like little models,
even the baby smiles
underneath the bright flashes
(she’s not a baby anymore–
why must i be reminded
that five years
have slipped into oblivion?)

the clouds move in
on a Sunday afternoon,
a semi-quiet house
where they pretend to pick up
while we lie on the couch
reminiscing the twin bed
we shared so many years ago.

(with money clenched
like fists in pockets,
we borrowed furniture,
walked across ant-biting carpet,
washed dishes by hand,
roasted like oily chicken
in the absence of central air)

is it so different now,
our money spilling out
into the screens of tomorrow,
the cool air tickling our skin
as their tweeting songs
remind us of all we have seen,
all we have yet to see?

Definition

/ lovizmytrio / 2 Comments

it could be the Spanish-English mix
from the nanny’s mouth as we sat in the zoo,
my thoughts of the last day of summer
slipping from my hands
quicker than the tears
my baby cried to sleep with,
or the anger inside
that someone would pay another
for everything i love the most.

it could be the defriending,
his cold absence of words in my presence,
or her emphatic insistence
that eight months is enough
time with her baby
when a thousand years
would not satiate me.

it could be the story i love
coming to a bittersweet end,
or the small voices
absent from my home
on the one day when
i need them most.

but i will never be quite able
to define what haunts me.

Unmelted

/ lovizmytrio / Leave a comment

i hand her wings
as i read about Icarus
to the two young buds

we open up Google
and relish in Breugel
as she calls to check in

she returns triumphant
waxed wings unmelted
no pledge to Apollo needed.