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.
