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The secret is my husband has many wives. One for bluebird mornings, one for doubt in the afternoon. One for the stretch of evening when the children perform their endless rituals. There is the business wife. The wanting wife. The wife who stands on the front porch and needs to talk to you. For a time we have the good wife. The thin wife. Eventually the dead wife. The ghost of every woman who tried to change for you.
For the Advice Cards at Baby Showers Baby socks don’t matter, but more importantly— neither does advice. This is not a performance for your friend or your mother or the woman in line who tells you about coats. Experience will teach you two things: you are the mother and it’s okay to let them go up the slide. Nothing in this world can prepare you for this love’s suffering. For joy and loneliness. For now just remember: birds sing, babies cry, and no matter the weather, every morning is new.
Motherload She keeps an office in her sternum, the flat bone in the center of her chest with all its urgent papers, vast appointments, lists of minor things. In her vertebrae she holds more carnal tasks: milk jugs, rotten plants, heavy- bottomed toddlers in all their mortal rage. She keeps frustration in her hallux: senseless chatter, jealous fangs, the spikes of a dinosaur’s tail. The belly is more complicated—all heartache and ambition. Fires and tidal waves. In her pelvis she holds her labors, long and slippery. In her clavicle, silent things. (Money and power. Safety and choice. Tiny
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Social Studies The night the baby died in her father’s arms trying to cross an ocean, our children slept. It is easy to list off platitudes. To write down every time we cupped a spider in our hands and let it out the door. There are many poems about the seasons, less about the time it takes to bury another child. It’s true— history has taught us to be good to children, to treat the earth as a living place. To stand on the side of every man and every woman who begs to land in the same green grass as you.
Dogs at the Park I am aware of dogs at the park. I am aware of men too. The number of steps to the keys, to the car, to the long stretch of grass where the baby lolls to and fro, sticks in his teeth. They ask— what good is a life with fear at your edges? And I ask—what mother does not listen to the slam of the sedan door and turn to see what ghost emerges? We are the gatekeepers, the sentinels. Maybe he is just a man walking or maybe he is searching for a bird to break. How many have already been broken? Let us count their wings.
For My Daughter on a Bad Day Life will rough you up. Throw you to the shore like a wave crashing—sand in your hair, blood in your teeth. When grief sits with you, hand dipped with rage, let it linger. Hold its pulse in your hands. There is no remedy for a bad haircut or ruined love like time. Even when death is coming, even when the filth rises in the back of your throat— this is not the worst of it. And if it is? Listen for the catbird calling. No matter the wreckage, they still sing for you.