(no subject)

[serene]

My poem for the poem-a-day challenge today.

Warning: potential (okay, likely) child-abuse triggers if you tend to be triggered in that direction.



When we were little, mom would ask us
"Do you know how much I love you?" and
her "This much" was a circle,
made of the fingers and thumb of one hand,
and with the finger of the other hand,
she would show us how a circle has no beginning,
has no end,
goes on forever, like the love of a mother
for her fruit, her children

She beat us, our mother did,
in the manner many of our friends endured, too,
and no one thought much of it then,
except the one who was being beaten,
and even then, I was pretty sure
I deserved the welts
from the wooden spoon
with the hole in the middle
to, as my mother said, "decrease wind resistance"
(As I recall, that particular set of donut-shaped bruises
on my eleven-year-old thighs
was for playing Mad Libs with my sister, using dirty words)

But she loved us, our mother,
with fierceness
and kept her circle close
so many times, she would tell me how her own mother had told her,
"You know, Joan, you're supposed to LOVE your children,
not be IN LOVE with them"

The circle of a mother bear's ferocious love
has no beginning
it has no end

When I was thirteen, I heard her crying through the walls
begging my father not to go
telling him she would do anything he wanted
asking him not to do this to our family
and when things settled out,
I did the thing that made me think I would get to be happy
and I went with him

My father, the mirror for my mellowness,
didn't hit me
didn't mind that I lied about stealing the twenty dollars --
it was the stealing he wouldn't stand for
He didn't understand mom's rule about how lying makes things worse, said, "Oh, I would have lied in your shoes, too."
didn't understand my anger
didn't understand my moods
didn't do my chores when I resisted them, as mom would have done, in order to avoid getting so angry at me she wanted to hit me
didn't care
didn't form a circle of his fingers and tell me how much he loved me
but my mother had told me I was no longer part of her family
no longer within the circle,
but outside of it
because her pain at losing me was too much to bear alone

so I cried myself to sleep,
silently
my mouth a circle of anguish to keep the scream from becoming real
to keep my father from knowing
I needed the fierceness
like I needed to breathe

Comments

[klwalton.livejournal.com]

I've decided I have such a hard time with poetry because I simply can't let my emotions get that close to the surface.

I love this. In a fiercely loving you way.

[sistercoyote.livejournal.com]

Some of us manage to be poets even though we want to hide our own emotions. ;)

Serene, I love this, too.

[serenejournal.livejournal.com]

I have no poker face, even in text. And thanks!

[serenejournal.livejournal.com]

Yay, thank you. (And yes, your conclusion is one that makes sense to me. Fortunately, when one wants to keep those things at bay, there's fiction, which probably about half my poems are.)

[firecat]

Awesome. The sudden switch from first person plural to first person singular is startling:

and even then, I was pretty sure

[serenejournal.livejournal.com]

Thank you!

[ailbhe]

Ow. Crikey.

(Janey Mac is an Irish swear - it's an avoidance of Jesus Christ, like Crikey).

I read this while distancing myself like billyo from it because really, it's very... affecting, if I let it.

[serenejournal.livejournal.com]

Eep, sorry. I've added a warning.

[hitchhiker.livejournal.com]

that's beautiful, though i can see what you mean about the triggery.