Monique
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Motherhood, Unrefined
🕑 Added 2018-05-15 16:59:26 +0000 UTCMotherhood, Unrefined
Your body had endured
The violent onslaught
Of man and madness
Still, it retained its tender springtide
Against oppression.
Revitalized by a dewy innocence,
Having carried your first
Daughter into this world
Who now slept each night
Against your chest.
Safe within
A soft, lush fortress
Encapsulated
Within thick briar forests.
That thorny exterior
Preserving all the gentle and warm.
Still,
I will never forget
The first time
I saw your tears.
Nor will I forget
The second or third time
I saw your tears.
It was seldom
But sonorous.
There is nothing more frightening
Than the realization
That your mother
Is not the orchestrator
Of the universe,
But a human
Naked and assailable.
Vulnerable to the elements.
Those forests surrounding
Her boundary waters
Slowly whittled away
By the relentlessness axe
Of man and madness.
Now with four young women
Perched on that fragile levee
Having touched the edge
Of mortality
More times than I can count
Death moved in with us early
Like a distant relative
Who invites himself over for tea,
But brings his luggage
(His laundry and his arms larder)
(His libations and his libido)
And lingers.
We all locked our doors.
Against man and madness
By name of Death,
Who seduced your mother
Who tried to run
With your child in the night.
Who slept in your bed.
Who crept into your body.
Who wrecked your vehicle.
Your body,
Hardened over with scar tissue.
Like train tracks
That trace
The historical geography
Of the tenacity of motherhood.
But beneath the stitching
Beneath plastic wires
Beneath brittle bones
And tattered nerve endings
Lies a softness
Unparalleled,
Untouched,
But bolstered,
By man and madness.
-mmd 2018
