HenryMy kids call him Henry
the little sapling that stands a foot high on our forest path he is mostly stick with a few green wisps of hope and even though they measured him this year and last they don’t seem to notice that he hasn’t grown at all yesterday they gave him a maple leaf for a hat and ferns for shoes like a pitiable summer version of a snowman and they hug him so gently every time we pass him leaning way down and telling him you’ll be big one day that as I walked by him today on my own and I saw that one of his flimsy arms had snapped I tied it upright with a piece of grass and found myself whispering to him you’ll be just fine. Second
Parenting was made for extrovertsI was told about patience
and coming alongside their emotions I was prepared for less sleep and less sex I surrendered my hygiene and my core but nobody warned me that parenting was made for extroverts that I would pretend to have to pee just to close a door that I would ask my children if we could play the jail game again where they stuff me between two chairs and throw a blanket over me and that I would tell them even after their third try to free me that I wasn’t rehabilitated yet I sat today on the kitchen floor back against the fridge mommy needs nobody to talk to her for a few minutes, ok and I closed my eyes fantasizing about the solitude of ashrams entrance exams tanning beds then my son slides a piece of paper around the corner it has hearts on it in green which is my favourite colour and my name and his name inside the biggest one which is when I remember that there is no balance in a day or a decade but that the aloneness will come and I will savour it and then I will not. I tell you that this is
a very exciting story in the way that parents talk to kids to get them to do things like turn off the lights and then I whisper that I once auditioned for the role of Dorothy and came in second I’ve been meaning to tell you this ever since you fell in love with the Wizard of Oz so I tell you about the call-backs and the way your granny braided my hair but it’s dark because you turned off the lights like I planned so I didn’t see that you were crying until it was too late I wish you had won you sob this into my body not to comfort me for this flood of grief is for you surprising us both as it gushed out of the cracks where your confidence in me once held firm. The Myth of EpiphaniesThe myth is that epiphanies roar
when in fact they are more like bubbles in mud a whisper a gurgle a hunch everything is small when it is born and so it is that so often they are buried as so many small things are so you ask the wise ones how do you feed them and they tell you to jump so you do not knowing if you are falling or flying because at first they are the same. |
Samantha Reynolds' Profile Go to page 1 of Samantha Reynolds' poetry Go to page 2 of Samantha Reynolds Poetry Alarm ClockI never click on those stories
the ones about accidents the ones about kids but I did this time read it quickly thinking perhaps that if I did it fast I would slip right past the sorrow but of course the grief pinned me right away under the weight of the rubble of all the days he won’t see it took away my air as if I had swallowed something too big which of course I had the impossible irreversibility of it and they didn’t say much about his family but I know I will think about them on Christmas on rainy days on this day each year I will buckle a little but eventually I will get distracted but not them I read once that people in the ache of grief don’t need alarm clocks for years they want nothing more than to stay asleep dreaming of the day before that day but the sadness comes suddenly each morning like being stabbed the streets are still quiet and she puts her hand on her heart where the wound has opened up again. The BalloonYou should have been asleep
an hour ago but you were hungry and then thirsty and you kept playing with the balloon you got at the party putting my sunglasses on it and my hat and dad’s headphones which did make me laugh and now you insist you’ll only sleep if balloon goes to sleep too so you make a bed for it on the floor out of towels which keep falling off and at first I play along tucking balloon in and kissing his blue head but the seventh time you tell me the covers on top of balloon aren’t working I yell it’s just a stupid balloon and I know right away the night has won so when an hour later your tears now dry balloon cuddled between us in your bed you ask me to tell you both another story I kiss balloon again and whisper this one’s for you. Twitchy ServantThis must have been
what it was like in medieval times a young princess flocks of twitchy servants trying to read her mood this morning laughing was banned and now socks are forbidden last night I didn’t know about the pillows and I sat on one she screamed no and I jumped up quick to obey to stop the sound of her yell that scraped the inside of my head and it must have been this way with royal offspring except she might have stomped and shouted off with head for the pillow infraction perhaps or for not finding the right pen or when the balloon popped and I couldn’t put it back together and maybe the next day lopped head buried or drowned or however they disposed of the guilty the young princess would ask for that nursemaid and someone would softly remind her what she’d done and she’d realize she missed her kind smile and that time they slipped in the mud and laughed so hard they peed a little in their dresses and her heart and stomach would tighten like she was choking and she would look around for who to yell at bring her back. |
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