Blinking little line:

Reminding me of what I was and have been

And what does not come as easily now.

Thoughts tumbling in silence

Forgotten when the blinking line sits before me.

Poetry and prose and whole stories

Lost.

Songs written and dreams discovered

Leave empty space behind and empty space is all I see now.

Lost.

Identity wrapped in small people and daily necessities

Gifts forgotten; unused.

Gathering dust in places I can’t even see.

Brief memories of desire

To create

To be

Something other than wrapped up in motherhood.

Motherhood is beautiful.

Messy,

Exhausting.

But not my identity.

Or is it now, because days and nights are filled with it?

The creation and care of these small people demands my attention.

But what will I be when they are no longer small?

Will I still have value?

Maybe that is the hardest part:

The knowledge that someday I will just be me again.

Undone and drained after years of what I wanted most:

To be a mother.

To be a wife.

To be wrapped up in it.

I wear it like a cloak

But those things I had before

Are still there

Somewhere.

Layers of myself

Beneath the mothering.

Writer, singer, creator.

Are still there, waiting to be uncovered.

That blinking line threatens me.

Says that when it is all uncovered again,

It will be a shadow of what it once was.

That I have buried my gifts in the ground

In hopes of keeping them safe

But have lost everything instead.