My child said today,
“You’d be rich if it wasn’t for me”
and she then smiled that goofy smile
adding, “Why did you have me then? I’m so expensive. ”
And when she later shimmied like a long lean cat
on a thin fence, I replied, “This is why I had you.”
And when she then made up her own word, bestfuzzer, to
describe a friend, I said, “This is why I had you.”
And as she curled into my belly on the bed
nuzzled my neck, and blew holes in my hair,
I whispered, “This is why I had you.”
She has forced me to reinvent myself
to plumb the deep waters of my reserve
my sanity, my will to live even
and bring up one more shining fish
one more favor, one more drive across town
one more strange meal at 2 am
And in cleaning away the thick of leaves, dirt, and grass
from my grandparents’ headstones
I become them, their bones my bones
Their struggle my struggle
How much we could have saved in not having children
would nevertheless have impoverished us in other ways.
We are driven by dumb unseen forces
as ancient as soil to create our children –
accident, intent, it doesn’t matter
so I pay homage to my grandparents - tired, frightened immigrants
barely out of childhood, with the stench of their parents
on fire singing their nostrils
Why did they persist?
What drove my grandmother to marry a man she’d never even met?
to bear his children, to suffer his beatings?
This is why I had you
Because I was lonely
Because I was *****
Because through you I sewed myself back together
Because you are my destiny
And when my child asks why I had her
I breathe milk and honey into her mouth
jostle the stars until they ****** like wind chimes
pulling the continents back together again.
And when she asks me,
I can only offer up the scoop of my palms and
the ticking of blood in my wrists as reasons.