The First Two Years

I am told I still exist beneath

The first two years of motherhood

How am I to believe that

After all the shaking, heaving, gasping

pain?

It’s true that I still sometimes find myself

Shook at the sound of an old lover’s name

I can still barely handle the slow

Way of unexpressed emotion

My fingertips still host little earthquakes

Whenever I read these poems out loud

I still grip the page too tight

But there is a tear that has yet to drop

I have been a late night craving, a front porch beer

Been a back alley smoke break

A wooden table under yellow lights

man with a microphone, woman at the bus stop

Grass on the side of the road

The swinging door serving drinks

The unsettled belly

I believe in the thick heat, the evident shift

I no longer speak of my mother,

Unless I’m using my story teller voice

I’m searching for the thread

Fingers feeling along the lines not yet written

Stealing words for the dressing room in my mouth, listening

For when it lands right. When it lands right

The west wind echoes through my chest

The sage brush whispers

The voice is unfamiliar, and I know it is my own

Maybe I’ve become an open fire

Or a brisk walk uphill

I’ve never been anything more important

Never prayed so much for more life granted

Whatever it takes to stay in the body

Loving another, loving myself more than before

I think who I am, who I am becoming

Is not who I have been, I think I am a familiar friend

something more sweet

I will meet me standing at the window

And I will kiss me, right on the mouth