not a pretty picture. not a good. not a bad. picture. but an argument.

Thursday, June 5, 2014

poppies i, a natural reckoning

my son cries when my husband and i make love.

no, you don't understand. this sentence is a betrayal. my son doesn't cry, he mourns when he hears us. but does not know what he is mourning. he shakes more formidably than the poppy's shadow, its pitiful neck each year born unbraced.

my son, like each of us, was shed from the skin which housed him, into his own thin skin, with eyes of wonder and terror.

i tell a friend of this sad and tender issue, this obstacle which lurks silently until we cry out and then he cries out, in our loving house.  she makes a mother's tut tut sound with her mouth, there is something decisively wrong with that child.

yes! i want to go to my knees and tell her.  yes, so wrong, so desperately wrong.  i want to bury my face in her legs and cry, don't you feel it?