She kicks while arms strike air,
Calling me to gallop, showing
She’s not had enough; and I’m
Doing everything I can to keep
Her satisfied, to keep her calm
While body marks growth with
Her pain; subsiding, my bridle
Bitten to avoid tears mixing
With the drool on our arms,
She quickens my feet, turning me
Around the couch we sit on to eat;
I twist to reverse, to give her
Something new, something to
Catch the attention fighting those
Cries; and her eyes move ahead,
Guessing our path, when I buck
And find another way to do the
Same thing, to stretch our walls
And give her want to smile, to
Free her, all while fighting those
Cries.
Posts published in “Year: 2017”
You saw right through me today,
And all the ways I can’t protect you,
Whether in my sight or from it.
And you stared, and I cried,
The first time I’ve done so since your birth,
And you saw me as a fraud,
As this parent by necessity,
And whose only banner is of Try,
Whose only recourse is to soothe you,
And to support you, to hold you
While you cannot hold yourself,
And to give you reassurance
When you cannot know you need it
And to let you know I’ll always be here.
Even if you see right through that lie,
Know I’ll always be here
While I’m here, and I hope to leave you
With more than enough to be who you are.
I can’t protect her everywhere she goes, and that is crippling to think about. I felt this loss, this squeezing of my soul when I looked at her this morning. I knew this wouldn’t be how it always is, with her hands resting on mine, calmed by just my presence. I knew that she would grow up and rebel, or be pressured, or love, and that her mom and I couldn’t be there if she absolutely needed us to be there. I thought about my weight, about how I need to do better and be better so that I can be her support just those few years longer. I thought of how selfish I still am, despite Candi and I being the least selfish we’ve ever been. I felt how I always want to feel: protective.
She
She screams and I hear it
Ripping away my childhood,
Giving me every reason to be
The feeder she wants, the
Protector she needs.
Especially the puffy appendages of a newborn. Not that I would /eat/ our daughter’s means of writing & walking, but I would stare at them for hours.
How did we grow her? What type of millennia after millennia after eons after eons would allow for evolution to deposit our daughter, asleep, in my arms? How did this even happen?
I need to protect her. I feel every current of air pass by her, and want to inspect each to ensure they’re worthy of touching or, God forbid, being breathed by our daughter. She deserves better than anything we can give, and we must do everything to keep her as happy as we can with the materials this world offers.
I smile and laugh and tear up when I look at her. She poops, I laugh; she burps, I cheer; she smiles, a piece of me is rebuilt from whatever tore me down before. That’s what it is– she is rebuilding me. She is giving me reason and purpose, and I am trying everything to keep her as happy as she can be, because her sadness will break me.
I’m hungry for more time– for centiseconds and milliseconds and nanoseconds to be more tangible, so we can spend more of each with her.
Originally posted this on the app Tencil, which starts each post with a phrase as a prompt, and limits writing to 10 minutes. Nifty.
As a writer, I always worried about what I would leave behind. I felt my writing was, honestly, only being left for me. Now, with you, I am leaving something for the world. It’s more than me now, but it is my lineage. And that makes me feel more happy than I thought I could be, and more than I thought I deserved to be. You are what I will leave as a mark on this world; you are a living embodiment of who I and your mother are, and for that I am grateful.
Your mother is beautiful,
And powerful,
And willing/wanting
To do all you need of her
So you can be.
She taps the tips of fingernails
Against your room,
Calling you to answer–
And you do, surely,
And she welcomes you
As if you chose to say hello
And acknowledge she,
Your mother,
Is.
You squirm inside
Your mother’s belly,
And she resists gravity
To carry you, foot
By swinging foot.
There are always tappings,
Keys, claws, or fingertips,
When I write to you,
Keeping me on task and motivated
To best their pace.
I say that, then pause
To revel in the idea of you:
Not yet molded, so just
A blur, the perfect blur,
Undefined and yet
Familiar, family, loved,
Though you may rebel or
Embrace or fall away,
You will always be this
Blur, this perfect blur,
An embodiment of
Us.
How did you do this, daughter?
How did you give me hope again
That this world can be good, that
There’s more to life than trying,
That the days can slow to smiles, that
There’s time yet to be worthwhile,
That I don’t matter if you can correct
All the failures before you, just by
Being you.
It’s unreal. I am holding back from realizing how amazing it is that you may someday read this or hear this or whatever is done with text in your time. I’m writing to our daughter. This is so cool.
I should probably acknowledge that I’m a social media junky, so I should also probably apologize for being a jerk.
All of these clicks, clacks, cracklings of the joints count down the seconds wrapped in days waiting for you to be the embodiment of happiness, that wrapped joy just waiting to be molded by us, by our successes and our failures– and your own–, and our love of everything you do despite those.
Blinded, but feeling about with feet for the next steps we need to take, we’ll take care of you as best we can, holding on to now as much as memories; I know you’ll grow tired of them, but trust me, they’ll be worth something later– you’ll see.
Your Mom greets when you knock, hoping you’d reply, and you always do.
1, 1, and now we’re 3.