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Feb 2021
I been using a washboard since I was eight
Cutting up the fels-naptha with a paring knife
One tub to wash
The other to rinse
Hanging on the line and then
Shaking out the stiff wrinkles
In the half-frozen dawn

Sunrise sure looked pretty,
All pink and orange and gold
I used to shiver but not from the cold
Thinking of scrubbing and rubbing
My hands raw
Bending and stooping
As my heart grew old

Not my body though!
I knew how beautiful I was
But I also knew how
Dangerous was love
Both the making and bearing of children
Lord knows how it rips you up
Shreds your most tender parts
Screaming bleeding flesh!
I don't think about it much
And anyway, it ain't always
About love - making babies and
Soiling clothes

A while back there were six of us
In the house
With the boys, when they were home
Wash day came twice a week then
When they brought home
That machine,
It's true it got a little
Easier but it still took me
The better part of two days

When the little ones visited, laundry day
Was every day
I didn't mind then - they
Were bright as sunshine those
Children
No mark of my agony on them

My granddaughter is having her first
Baby now and she does complain,
There are piles of damp, rumpled
Towels, and men's shirts
***** and stained
For her to attend to, they
Constrain her
Conference calls and
Computer time -
Once I caught her sobbing
About the endlessness of it all

And the invisibility!
The humiliating impossibility!
She hasn't even realized it yet
But I won't tell her about that,
She'll see soon enough
There's no quarter for dreams
For girlhood
Snuffed by that one
First scream
The one that is stifled
In the dark
Under his weight
The night of the wedding
And never heard again

Oh, the centuries of
Drudgery
I carry in my cells
The wails of grandmothers
And their dozens of children -
The ones who lived
Blotting out the memory
Of babies who died -
All that! For such a short life!

I don't want her to know the enormity of it
One day soon,
She will understand all too well
And like seasons,
The inevitability will break her heart
For my great-grandmother, Antonia Rosman Swetish
biche
Written by
biche  53/F/Unceded Potawatomi Land
(53/F/Unceded Potawatomi Land)   
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