Spring Break
a poem ? / a poem
On the fourth day of Spring Break, in the Pacific Northwest, I start to worry I might have a mental breakdown. My daughter waking me up anywhere between 5:00 am and 6 am, first with a song and then with the launch of her soft body against mine, finding any available sleeve or collar to slip her little hand into and tickle me awake.
I am used to being alone up here and writing so I feel unfairly annoyed by my companions (the one I birthed and the one I married) for “keeping me” from my poems and my deadlines, for not letting me sleep in a very soft bed until 8:30 am where I usually jolt awake only to realize I am solo and have the whole day stretched out for writing. My helix swollen from sleeping on the wrong side. I send two working (as in I am working on them but they are not working) poems to amanda who encourages me to keep going. Quoting the lines she likes most. I watch the fog clear from the passage and step outside into the 33 degree weather to shower.
The gremlins begin to whisper that I am not good enough, will never be good enough, not enough not enough. And I try to ignore them, pouring a cup of yesterday’s coffee, and sending my daughter out with her father and grandmother.
The rain coming in the afternoon yesterday, keeping us indoors. I hear an eagle keening this morning and I realize the last few days that I have woken up without god. Reading last night about the possibility of nuclear war.
I mix almond flour and two eggs, and a quarter cup of molasses into a bowl and bake a ginger cake. I stick broccoli and chicken tenders into the oven. My friend talks about buying beautiful wood and lighting a fire before he reads how bad the smoke is and I say well at some point one just has to decide whether they are just going to live or not, right? There is nothing left untouched any more. And I try not to think of my daughter’s body. The plastic filling it. My husband, who doesn’t believe in anything, whispering before she was born do you think she has a soul already?
And around 6:00 pm I throw my daughter in the car to drive her around the island, putting a B sides album of the Beach Boys on, and I watch her head drop and roll from side to side. Dylan coming on after, and then the Everly Brothers, and I’ve brought my camera driving past my favorite landmark on the island. The light so beautiful at that time of day, orange and full-bodied, whatever God I’ve lost I thought I might find again. There is an AA meeting at 7 pm, but by the time I make it back and do a semi-succesful car seat to bed transfer, I have to stay and rub her back trying to purr and not hiss close your eyes, close your eyes, it’s time to close your eyes, I accidentally hit the heart beat option on the sound machine, and not the ocean option, her eyes popping wide open, at 6:57 pm before I shhh her back to sleep, I find myself crouching at her side as if I am already in prayer. And then the day begins again.
It feels insane to have to write this, to have to say - that if you read these essays and you like them, hitting the little “like” / heart button at the bottom of the essay, becoming a paid subscriber or leaving a comment / sharing the piece does wonders for breaking through the algorithm that Substack was always becoming.
Oh I needed this one.
(you are plenty more than enough)