39: I didn't get to blow out any candles...
But--there was this poem.
I made plans to fly home for my 39th birthday, only to wake up to no balloons or cake or cards or gifts from T and Aoife and the unhappy discovery we had “no plans” planned, and as any 39 year old would do, I called my mom and cried. She asked me most what I wanted for my birthday. I said a room where I could be surrounded by my books, with ample time for writing, and the option for room service (preferably sushi). Knowing I would get none of this, she asked again, and I answered simply: sushi and time—to write. I have yet to get myself some sushi—though I have since been promised it by T we will visit the downtown’s sole Japanese restaurant Samurai (yes, Samurai), but I did carve out time for this poem.
My first full year postpartum has been rife with stressors and sadness and also equal parts joy. Though, as my esophageal pain is at an all-time high—with an endoscopy in just two weeks time, and I’m back in Columbus—where I find my mood darkens, is darkening, this poem echoes the hardness of my thirty-ninth year. Its title: a nod to Lucille Clifton’s famed poem. Its contents: Stevie and her thoughts and almost four decades of living.
RUNNING INTO A NEW YEAR
my vista
the dusting of an old blind
my floor littered
by gallon bottles of spring water not from a spring
someone said you could fall in love
or you can remember to eat
a whole year
and this
Work
Writing
Health
a strangled tulip
dead
palmetto bug
I moved
and there were surfaces
I forgot to touch
or touched
then forgot
what
songs did I follow and
did they ever get good
what else can there even be
to understand
I fed my baby
lemons
and dreamt
I took my pills
I took my pills
and moved my hand
arm
foot
to feed
my baby
whatever it takes
to remain
this strange
engine
thin
fold of skin
the South’s heat
like butter
and me
eating
every fruit
and in every fruit
a bit of rock
isn’t all rock meant
for pockets
in coats
near water
mostly
dark
simple weight
I mean
there was a day
I watched C look over the river's bank
at a cool dying sun
and asked if she'd like a photo
of her
looking
she said yes
then said to me later
she had been thinking about walking
in
until she was
no longer
when I had asked
in the kitchen
we sat quietly
and I placed garlic
at the bottom of
a white bowl
to wait for the dirty bloom
of my own
forgetting
I am nothing
if not aspirational
no savior and
not
the only prisoner
what I mean is
I suppose there is light
and there is light
changing
when you move
around it
your body
a body
sun's foil
pretty on
the whole
yet searching
even here
I move my legs
from the pleasure
of shadow
a whole year and my heart
is carrying a different kind of bird
homesick
maybe
for another rain
an alternate arrangement
of walls
my legs unintelligible
my mouth
still
telling a good story
but any good storyteller knows every story is really
a story of another story
the leaf pile
a poem
a forsythia
a ball gag
each movement
threading a new reality
each non-movement threading a new reality too
elsewhere
anywhere
sometimes I wish
things were different
then think better
to burn
great architectural shapes
in the mind
better to start
not with beginnings
but at the end
there are too
many beginnings
