Health knowledge made personal
|
the ones we tell each other, late at night or early in the morning over coffee & a cigarette, more than one if it's a story we've told over and over like chain smoking, like dirty laundry soaking in the tub, stains evoking lost memories of teething, cut lips, blood on the sweatshirt where you held his head & he bled all over you & you want to speak about this love you have for other women who listen intently, with their own pain showing & many cigarettes to carry them through the telling. a compassionate voice or ear, the closeness we feel yet cannot say because we're afraid of a label but what we really want, I want, is someone fearless, a weaver of words or truthteller, someone who's not afraid of hurting while resetting a bone. to talk about the helplessness of being stuck in a house with a sick child, the boredom that strikes, the complaining we do, being called martyr when all I really want is to tell someone how unfair it is that I'm the only one they call for in the middle of the night & it's my ears hear them coughing at 3 a.m. & I can't just lie there. how to find out what our own needs are & how to take care of ourselves, not just wait for him to come home, take over, pick up the toys and the pieces, mop up our spills, how to find a quiet time, time alone, time to think & write. our need to be replenished with each other, filling up our bowls with sugar & coffee so we can tell our stories not just talking over fences in the backyard but actually getting out & seeing women doing the same hard work, no pay, no thanks, just their little faces when one least expects it, smiling & asking me to sing a song about I love you or making up a song about superman all by himself in the living room. he says, go away mom, don't talk (meaming I have to do this alone, don't listen cause it might not be perfect the first time). I send you this in guise of a letter because that's the way the words are falling out of my fingers. in my mind I hear the tapping on keys and it comforts me at least I can listen to myself talk without talking out loud (for that's what crazy women do). so I keep on writing & dreaming trying to live truthfully with my emotions, in my body and I hope you do the same. from Little Mother, published 1997 Jennifer Boire |
Write a comment:
|
