letters to children
1.
i write letters to the children i will never have
because i am familiar with 6 a.m. in winter,
creeping tip-toed like a spider in the snow.
2.
i am the snow.
i am the snow.
i happen to be the snow.
my mother is like the sky,
cold and vast and unencumbered,
holding onto nothing, letting go of everyone,
rootless and drifting.
3.
i am familiar with 6 a.m. in winter,
the way the quiet and the dark
press thick against windows,
like little fingers.
i have crept tip-toed over creaks
in the floorboards that i knew too well,
covering my mother's sleeping figure
in blankets as the blue flickering light
of the television licked her mind
free of dreams,
dreading futures, dreading lives.
we do not ask each other's dreams.
i know she does not remember hers.
i know she is not interested in mine,
the way i know cold and houses the way
people know maps of palms,
sunlight in a green living room,
the spaces between two bodies that lovers make.
we do not ask each other's feelings.
i know she does not remember what it is to feel.
i know she is scared of how much i feel,
how i cry and i laugh and i smile and i hate and i love
too easily, too much, too often,
like fireworks, crickets in a mason jar.
4.
i tell her that i was not happy,
how i had forgotten what it was to want to live.
she laughs bitter laughs, snarls
"you think that's the point of life,
why we're put here on this earth--
to be happy?!"
i want to tell her that the only point
in anything is to be happy--
to laugh, to love, to live,
to feel like you are exploding
into the Universe, like light,
existing everywhere and in everything at once,
to be so full of goodthings that you wonder
how it is possible for mere human fleshboneshairteeth
to hold on to the very secret of existencecreationUniverse,
the reason that stars&planets formed galaxies,
the reason that plants sprouted roots & fish sprouted legs,
and the reason that two human beings ever decided
to turn lust into love, to turn the physical into the divine,
and to conjure another human being into this existence
so that it might too know what it is to be happy--
to laugh and to love and to live.
instead i hang up the phone.
cold click, silence between us.
and i wonder if she remembers
why she even chose to create life at all
if she doesn't even know
what the point of living is.
5.
i am familiar with 6 a.m. in winter,
the way the quiet and the dark
press thick against windows,
like little fingers.
in these mornings, i write letters to the children i will have.
"i remember what it is to be you, the magic of the world
feeling brand new and unfolding, bare tree branches covered in snowfall.
if there is one thing i would tell you about life, it would be:
it goes on. hold on and hold on. it goes on."
i write letters to the children i will have
because i am the snow,
i am the snow,
i happen to be the snow.
i am the snow that billows forth
from the cold of my mother's sky,
covering the harshness that winter brings
to a city, bare tree branches
and empty sidewalks,
making the world seem
fresh, sparkling, glittering, magic,
brand new and unfolding.
i will hold on.
i write letters to the children i will never have
because i am familiar with 6 a.m. in winter,
creeping tip-toed like a spider in the snow.
2.
i am the snow.
i am the snow.
i happen to be the snow.
my mother is like the sky,
cold and vast and unencumbered,
holding onto nothing, letting go of everyone,
rootless and drifting.
3.
i am familiar with 6 a.m. in winter,
the way the quiet and the dark
press thick against windows,
like little fingers.
i have crept tip-toed over creaks
in the floorboards that i knew too well,
covering my mother's sleeping figure
in blankets as the blue flickering light
of the television licked her mind
free of dreams,
dreading futures, dreading lives.
we do not ask each other's dreams.
i know she does not remember hers.
i know she is not interested in mine,
the way i know cold and houses the way
people know maps of palms,
sunlight in a green living room,
the spaces between two bodies that lovers make.
we do not ask each other's feelings.
i know she does not remember what it is to feel.
i know she is scared of how much i feel,
how i cry and i laugh and i smile and i hate and i love
too easily, too much, too often,
like fireworks, crickets in a mason jar.
4.
i tell her that i was not happy,
how i had forgotten what it was to want to live.
she laughs bitter laughs, snarls
"you think that's the point of life,
why we're put here on this earth--
to be happy?!"
i want to tell her that the only point
in anything is to be happy--
to laugh, to love, to live,
to feel like you are exploding
into the Universe, like light,
existing everywhere and in everything at once,
to be so full of goodthings that you wonder
how it is possible for mere human fleshboneshairteeth
to hold on to the very secret of existencecreationUniverse,
the reason that stars&planets formed galaxies,
the reason that plants sprouted roots & fish sprouted legs,
and the reason that two human beings ever decided
to turn lust into love, to turn the physical into the divine,
and to conjure another human being into this existence
so that it might too know what it is to be happy--
to laugh and to love and to live.
instead i hang up the phone.
cold click, silence between us.
and i wonder if she remembers
why she even chose to create life at all
if she doesn't even know
what the point of living is.
5.
i am familiar with 6 a.m. in winter,
the way the quiet and the dark
press thick against windows,
like little fingers.
in these mornings, i write letters to the children i will have.
"i remember what it is to be you, the magic of the world
feeling brand new and unfolding, bare tree branches covered in snowfall.
if there is one thing i would tell you about life, it would be:
it goes on. hold on and hold on. it goes on."
i write letters to the children i will have
because i am the snow,
i am the snow,
i happen to be the snow.
i am the snow that billows forth
from the cold of my mother's sky,
covering the harshness that winter brings
to a city, bare tree branches
and empty sidewalks,
making the world seem
fresh, sparkling, glittering, magic,
brand new and unfolding.
i will hold on.