I.
The nature of motherhood is fragmented
I am carved in pieces and devoured
fractured like a puzzle
shattered as a vase
you steal my shards
leaving me glass dust
you tug at my thoughts
unspooling them from my mind
and with dimpled palms
shred and scatter them
in helpless crumbs.
My form is possessed.
I give myself away in chunks—
hands to comfort breasts to nourish
arms to cradle my lap a home for you
offering my flesh to be lovingly butchered
my limbs your playground.
An orchard — I overflow with fruit
pears dangle from my earlobes
my thighs birth peaches
my skin satisfies you.
My nature is both love and resentment
a fountain forever replenishing you
a carafe to quench your thirst
creating life and always on the brink of destroying it.
Will I ever be whole again?
II.
Barely a footstep from her own youth
bones still growing, lanky and unformed,
she becomes a mother.
And her lifetime of labor has just begun.
She will never know solitude
sleep, a stranger
her thoughts, stolen.
She accomplishes no feats,
climbs no mountains,
creates no art.
No, her business is maintaining life.
Only half built,
she begins to deconstruct herself,
and it is unknown if the decades
will harden her,
will rage be her inner companion,
feeling always cheated of her true life,
or soften her,
making her flesh warm and vulnerable,
a puddle of tenderness,
amorphous.
III.
For millennia, this has been our work,
the work of women—
conception and growth,
birth and nurturing,
feeding, swaddling,
sleep now, please go to sleep,
founding the next generation,
cultivating them, keeping them alive,
while comforting those who diminish,
who approach the end of life’s arc,
she awakens one generation
and guides the other to their eternal rest.
She loves her work and despises it,
she harbors enmity and adoration
for the child, the husband,
the sister, the parent,
they fill her life and empty her,
she, balancing each moment in paradox.
IV.
My children are beloved,
grandchildren adored,
but great-grandchildren are strangers,
they live in cities across the seas,
speak in unfamiliar tongues,
their faces foreign,
their hearts unknown to me.
V. She toils for decades for her sons so they may go off courageously and cruelly to hunt the stag, to fell the tree, to burn the forest, to slaughter and consume, to drink earth’s rivers, harvest its creatures, to sacrifice themselves thoughtlessly in war, to continue down humanity’s dark and descending road. And she, left mindless, vacant, with her emptiness and her grief. VI. It’s all they did—
generation after generation.
Mothers, aunts, grandmothers.
There was no question, no choice:
the hours bestowed, the tears shed, the sleep abandoned,
the trading of peace for fear.
The child— sometimes a holy sacrifice,
sometimes a curse.
The ones who choose not to make this sacrifice:
Are their lives are dried up, empty, full of sorrow?
I know many who remain young in spirit
who are brighter, who have relished their days who have given their years in service
who have lived in joy
without the suffering, the suffering
we have endured
only to end our lives burdened
laden with a sack of worry, a pouch of guilt,
sapped of life’s energy
skin stuffed with regret
our minds whittled away
our souls hollowed.
Now we have the choice:
it’s like looking above the fog, from a mountain peak.
We glimpse the horizon for one brief moment --
Do we want to open the door that can never be closed again?
To give away our hours, our days, our lives?
To become love’s prisoner?
Will their lives be deserving of our sacrifice?
This love, invisible when it’s being lived --
the daily devotions, the little labors, the milk and comfort,
the homework and the laundry and the sleepless nights
No, we see only what remains
of her at the end --
the debris, the rubble.
The devastation. VII. We do not think of her – like we do not consider the loyal stone beneath our feet, the firm structure of our walls, our sheltering roof, the obviousness of clouds, the flow of oxygen through our lungs, the steady breath, the soothing heartbeat, the bread, the milk, the warm plate set for dinner, the comfort of our evening pillow, the sun that greets us relentlessly each dawn, the water that fills our unquenchable glass, the twirling of the earth, the eternalness of stars. Brewer of tea, maker of beds, caretaker of plants and pets, cleaner of dusty corners, the baker of bread, the author of soup, rubber of backs with thick, nurturing hands. We give her not a thought, as we return home and are met with touch and talk and tenderness, the things just exist and always will, she constitutes the frame of our lives, the surefooted rock that supports us as we leap into life and soldier and doctor and teach and create art and win races and earn medals. We boast of achieving greatness, how exceptionally capable we are, we say, and she answers with her broad and unconditional smile. She is invisible. Until she dies. Or is removed from us, departing swiftly, heartlessly, or crumbles away from us gradually, leaving our toes dangling off the precipice, abandoning us – reeling, unsteady and unstable, our home collapsing around us, our skin devoid of its skeleton, our invisible web of love disintegrating, our garden withered, our cupboard empty, our sky now cruelly blank. We didn’t know how much she was the architect of our world, until she forsakes us. VIII. For now, you are my little companion. Your world is small. Your body desires my body, content only in my presence, hanging, ape-like, from my limbs, always touching me. I am the soil from which you sprout. You recently emerged from my earth. Slow down, be quiet, I say, but life's energy pulses through you, and you must run, wriggle, leap, as the stream must flow, as the wind must drive the clouds like a shepherd across the horizon. Your hand, a tender turtle sheltered in my palm, your form, bruised and knobby-kneed, hair cow-licked, arms and legs a blur of movement, smooth-shouldered, honey-cheeked, your skin is nectar to my lips. My eyes never tire of your face, divine. Yet soon your chest will broaden, you will outgrow my embrace. You will have a different body and a new mind. The world will reveal itself as a blossom, its complexity of petals drawing you in, seducing you, and you will venture forth— a sailor upon the seas, you will marvel at their immensity, their salty depths soaked with whales, and wander across continents, explore cities men have made, your heart will crack open, a pomegranate sliced and spurting, it will attach itself to another, you will love, and suffer, suffer, suffer as all we creatures do with minds. You are one piece of humanity and humanity a speck on the surface of the world. The son of your father and your father’s father, an unbroken line of generations, blindly forging ahead, to a place unknown. We are myth makers, God-creators, our minds potent, treacherous, all-encompassing, where hells and heavens reside, the culmination of earth’s evolution. Your form is beloved. I gave you life, know your body with a sacred intimacy, and you will continue this journey without me.
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