Muscle Poems

Our sit in the hospital lobby reserve, for me, is on a schedule of recovery that is like window dressing. Tilting my head, well-oiled apparatus guiding a juggling act. Like balancing toes on a pin cushion with tiny holes and their subtle exhale, with expert feet and taught supple muscles calculating precision all throughout my trunk around the carpet and the features of the common room. My thoughts rolodex elegant defenses, thoughts honed into tactical acuity, independence stealthily reemerging by my newly discovered phrases for performance, for freedom is now needing to be earned. Yet true by the doctor, my nature never having been destroyed, just ignored.

 

With my mother sitting closer to me than what is genuine, I let the feeling of dread and blockade pass through me. It is better to feel the stinging heat of confrontation than to hold in the cold what I need to say.

 

But, saying what I needed to say..

 

I realize the passing of stigma by my mother does not “this too shall pass” for me anymore. It was only when I finished asserting myself towards her that I had created the certainty of abandonment, of trouble. I’ve had this lesson before; once I felt her undercurrent, redemption left like approval’s flimsy security. I am shamed, I am shamed, and I do not lie anymore. Though the risk made a wound, the wound made risk.

 

What did I do? I remained in my integrity and the independent realization of what my capacity contains for my potential. For my mother, as overwhelmed as she is overwhelming, with her wrong spiritual envy, shut down from the love and self-worth she barely had, except to believe it was there because I chose her in fidelity to begin with, was as a daughter taking care of a child. What danger it was to let my mother let me fly.

 

Now home, where I am contradicted, dark and destructive assumptions fueled by the steam of our most unexpressed feelings and complaints between us, seethed underneath us for persistent hours, and entertained us with the gymnastics of our breathing. When then to approach, even the peace, and walk away with the truth?

Nonetheless, her eyes are wide afraid, peering from within a deeper focal point. The temples hold her drama. It looks like she cannot dim the lids naturally, so she cannot know how to shield her face anymore. The tear ducts are bigger than average and ready at the slightest movement of the heart.

There is a full glass, but we buy the empty cup.