Taking of power

And then the words flow,

Like the brackish water lapping

Dirty river to tumultuous sea.

Not saline, nor sweet, nor fully integrated.

Some other thing.

An unassailable, nameless feeling.

(I think of you and your storms)

I look up at the billowing curtain,

Translucent vermillion,

Backlit in the afternoon.

I’d like to think that I learned everything I needed to

From this failure.

That next time,

Should there be a next time

(There is always a next time)

I will be a better version of myself

A deeper, more generous version,

A less afraid one.

I fear that maybe that’s a little lie I tell myself

To convince me that there’s some comfort

In a world that rips babies from their parents’ arms

In the name of some geopolitical boundaries
That I can neither see nor believe in.
Nor suffer.

(And yet we pretend, shuffling through metal detectors

And radiating our baggage--

The minor indignities of hands patting down our imperfect

Bodies in plain sight.)

I float, retching in a sea,

With each wave of nausea,

I am overcome, I relent, it all falls away.

You never liked when I cried,

And I’m crying now, defiantly, to myself

while the YouTube autoplay Gods

Cleverly play Jeff Buckley, then Linda Ronstadt, then Joan Baez

Then Joni Mitchell, because they know

The particular dimensions of this pain,

(Really, they only aggregate data and then make predictions)

This subterranean, prehistoric pain

That tears through me,

That is leaving.

I want to believe that I can let it go.

I want to let it go.

You say you want simple things,

(But all I ever wanted was to come home to you.)

An imperfect home, to be sure, world-weary and wounded.

And running so no one would notice what’s missing.

I look down at the toilet,

At my hand that cleans,

What’s left behind,

Damn, of course, I’m ovulating.

My face red and mottled,

Made uglier from the salty tears,

Skin puffy and showing my certain age.

And I mourn for all the children I never had,

Never will have

Never got to have

(And all the years of joyfulness that I can’t remember

Or that I do remember and miss,

Her tiny hands clutching mine,

Her belly laugh, her dancing eyes)

Because I was deafened by my own

Ambition

Or drive

Or fear.

I want to learn to listen to my soul,

Not just my body,

Prodded and palpated by physicians,

Debated by politicians and pundits.

I want them to let me be a woman, at night, alone.

(With no questions or comments

Or arched-eyebrow allusions.)

And then I want to do the same for her,

To show her what it really means
To be brave.
To be free.