Another piece that came out of my recent poetry class. I originally wrote it on a summer beach day in August, after a particularly hard week with my daughter.
Mater Dolorosa
I’m sitting on the beach
Hand poised
Over my slim Van Gogh notebook
Clutching a sharpened No. 2 pencil as if my life depends on it
Maybe it does.
I know how to write, but
The past few days have sapped my energy
Stolen my will to fight
With and for my daughter
And I’m tired.
My eyes are glued
To the gnarled, blackened tree roots
Hunched over in the middle of the lake
Half drowned yet
gasping
for
air.
Suddenly I feel as if I’m sinking
Into the blackness
I’ve tried to bury
Since anxiety and fear erased the girl who used to be my daughter
Panic, vomit, repeat.
A compulsion no 8-year-old should have.
When did this become our life?
I lower my hand as if to write
But the pencil refuses.
Instead, I scan the shore
Find my daughter
frolicking
in the frothy wake
Sweet and innocent
In her pink bathing suit with the butterflies
Hair tied back in pigtails
A sparkling rainbow upon her face
The first I’ve seen in days, months
Or has it been years?
Yet here, on the shore, she shimmers
Like a beautiful fragment of light
Brighter even than the sun
Streaking down
to part the clouds
Like Moses and his Red Sea
Only this time it’s blue, like the Madonna
And that’s the moment
My pencil begins to shift
As I write,
Finally, I have my daughter back