I didn’t get a break today

You said

As if

You expected one

As if

You could stop

Every need

From everyone

Including yourself

As if you could count

On a soft warm bed

Halfway through

To “recharge your batteries”

As your mom used to say

But that isn’t how it works

You’re the parent now

And you’ve just announced

That you have to poop

So you could write

This poem.

What gift says

Thank you for cleaning the shit off the walls

What gift makes up for the sleepless nights

The lines stretched into skin

The hair clogging the drain?

What sale could possibly compensate

for a career put on pause

for those first precious years

before someone else is in charge

Of an entire education

Is there a card on the rack

That speaks to the hope of morning

And desperation of night

A wreath to adorn the door

Of the home that feels both like a prison and a sanctuary

It’s endless loop of days so poetically represented by a string of evergreen

Here, I wrapped this for you

This totem in my hands

Is nothing

is nothing

is nothing

But me trying to say

Thank you

What did you do today

You ask

I want to tell you the truth

That I called my friends

That I took a nap in the car

That I took a walk

That I blasted my favorite songs from high school and sang over them with tears streaming down my face

That I stared at the way the wind blows the branches

That I looked at the clouds moving in the sky

That I walked into a bookstore just to feel the spines run along on my hand

Because all these things are what I needed today

But I don’t feel like I can tell you that

Because how can you ask someone

Please

Watch my children

So that I can hear the sound of my own breath again

Instead

I keep this all to myself

Because I live in a world

Where it is not productive to touch the earth with cracked fingernails

The days in which I had time to stop are over

You are a parent now, they say.

It is your child’s turn to play

And when they stop and dig holes in the ground

You are supposed to say

Hurry home, we have to go

I cannot dig for worms with you

It is no longer my place

For I must feed and clothe and work

That you may notice the birdsong

without me.

I lay on the bed

In the home of my youth

The sounds are the same as they’ve always been

My mother’s voice through the vents

My father’s work in the yard

I know how the light hits every doorknob

Every bedspread

At every time of day

In every season

Of every year

I know which windows don’t have a shade

And which curtains my mother has replaced

I left in search of my own life

I bought my own bedspreads

My own curtains

And returned with arms full of children

And a heart full of gratitude

For when I lay on this bed now

I hear my children’s laughter through the vents

I hear the hum of their toys

I lay in the bed of my youth

With the exhaustion of a mother

Knowing that this is the one place

In the entire world

That I get to be

A child.

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I kiss his shoulder

Rest my lips along the curve of his neck

He folds himself around me

Limbs too long to crawl up

And fit back inside

Six years gone since our bodies split into two

His size shocking me every day

This body that I made

This human that I grew

Can barely fit in my lap

Anymore

And yet

I still ache for the softness of his body

I still hunger for the taste of his skin on my lips

Just as I did in the days of rocking chairs and breast milk

Just as I did in the sleepless blur of my own infancy

The fissure of our bodies birthed us both

And here he stands

Six years later

Reminding me

That I, too, am sprouting like a bud

Long and thin and sure

For every time he folds himself into me

He shows me

That the body of a mother

Never

Ever

Stops

Growing ,

Too.

I did the laundry

And took out the trash

While you did the dishes

And fed our children.

I thought to myself,

why,

this is the work of living.

It is as though my tired body

is connected to all those before me

For when I bend to task

I feel the shadow of thousands

Of millions

Of billions

Behind my back.

They rub my knots from my shoulders

Brush the sweat from my brow

And say to me

O, dear one

We have pushed through the barriers of time

To tell you

That you are not the first

To hold each day as a trophy

Hard fought and hard won

Knowing that tomorrow

It all starts again.

We are not so different, you and I

We

Have lived

The work

Of living

You’ve never seen my hair down

Last night the pain in my scalp led me to unveil it before you

It felt so good to massage my roots

After years of tying it up

Holding it back from your grasp

You cocked your head and smiled

“So beautiful” you said

I felt a tear forming at the corner of my eye

You reached out to touch it

My instinct has been to pull back

But this time I let you stroke the length of my hair

“So long” you said

You had no idea that I had long hair

I had no idea myself

I had let the faucet of time run my split ends down the drain

And so this...

This was a really nice moment

It was as if you were seeing me differently

It was as if

For the first time

You weren’t just seeing me as your mother

You were seeing me as a woman

What is the night if not another place for a mother to give?

To contort herself to fit the needs of her children, her spouse

To pretzel herself around bodies and cries

What is rest if not another landscape we yearn for, an Eden always out of reach, a mirage before our tired eyes?

Motherhood robs us of sleep early

Before the Great Exit

Before the hope becomes reality

It marks you with tired eyes and frazzled bones

It’s pillowed and soaking leftovers a laughing stock for anyone and everyone whose body has never made a person from scratch

In the story of a mother, sleep is the villain

Always taunting

Always laughing in the dark corners of another endless night

Another hour alone

Here, our heroine battles

Here, our heroine cries

Unseen

Unheard

Again

And again

And again

The sleep of a mother is an oxymoron

It’s just a poem

written by a mother

In the middle of the night

Who can’t

For the life of her

Fucking sleep.