I AM.
watching the coffee jiggle a little in my
sea-foam green Yeti coffee cup. The lid
keeps it hot for hours, so I can drink it
when my body says I need it, not gulp it
early in the morning, trying to drink it all hot
before the kids wake up, and I become Mama.
I am a mama. But lately, I am feeling the
sorrow at the life I’m missing by being Mama
most of the time.
I am the memory of eating breakfast in Prague
with my friend Stephanie, sitting outside at an iron-black
table that looked like lace, sturdy enough to seat us
without the legs jiggling on the cobblestones.
We ate pastries and dark coffee and marveled
at the pink building right next to the pistachio one.
The colors flash in my mind still.
I am rollerblading in Central Park, on a hot day,
wearing blue shorts and a red tank top, listening to Madonna
on my yellow Walkman, trusting my feet, my hips, the
lips that sing out loud, even though everyone I passed
could hear me and not the music. I keep pushing my legs
forward, gliding, flying, and not thinking of anything else.
°
I am the first time I went to KVI beach, with Tita,
the year after I had moved to Vashon, and we had drunk
lattes and shared some tofu scramble at the hippie restaurant
for breakfast. We were being paid for a half day to create
American Studies together, a year-long class that blended
the facts of history and the stories of people who lived
those events. We were done before the plates were cleared.
So she drove me to the beach, and we walked its length, talking
about our lives. As I listened, I felt my chest open to all that sky,
the quiet waves, the massive blue heron skimming the water
before it took off and began to fly free.
°
And I began to fly free too. That beach is where
I first learned I could free myself.
°
And right now my kiddo, Deej, non-binary, Black, about to turn 9,
a little rascal with a deeply sensitive heart,
is on that beach, on a field trip with their class,
picking up plastic to remove it from the spaces
between driftwood pieces, learning how to be a steward
of the land.
°
And I am sitting here, drinking coffee, still hot, in my office,
while they are learning to be free on my beach, 30 years after
I first walked its length.
°
Time isn’t a line. It’s a Möbius strip.
In this moment, I can see it clearly,
an endless loop of the the vista on KVI, the water,
the mountains, and the sky.
°
Right now.
And then again.
I wrote this poem in 15 minutes, with the women who were also writing poems, in the class I offer every Thursday: Trusting the Words That Emerge From Our Bodies. Every week, the poems that emerge blow me away. The vulnerability, the urgency, the images that will stay in my mind.
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