Week 1: STATUS COMPLETE!

Carl’s 52/1: Untitled
My 52/1: Because the Prompt Said

 

Because the Prompt Said

 

Right this moment

I am watching the pattern of morning sun

light up the bureau top,

revealing dust & Saturday chores,

while my daughter

—18 months and sleepy,

hair heavy in her eyes—

watches cartoons on the bed beside me

her hand flung across the pillows,

nonchalant, to rub my 9 month belly.

 

Right this moment

apples are falling in our neighbor’s yard,

warm & sweet & rotten,

& raccoons carry the cores behind our house

during their nightly, moveable feasts.

We find the pieces scattered,

mingled with our trash,

forgotten when the coons stopped to drink

from our daughter’s pool,

tiny & plastic, aggressively pink.

 

Right this moment

I am 31 & 3 days,

& the year still looks fresh to me,

full of unopened October days, holidays,

dreams of steady harvest, journeys taken.

Yet I am also unmoored by motherhood,

free-floating, though the stars seem familiar.

Forever losing—& finding—myself in books;

friends; the love of a man

& the face of our child.

More at peace than I have been

but wary too. Ready to leave this place

between birth and birth.

Ready to be alone in my body,

returned to the full colorwheel of my thoughts,

the fierce tug of adventures

that require no passport.

 

This is what it means to be me,

to be a mother/person/writer

to be 31 & 3 days

& right this moment

writing a poem.