Who do you imagine I am? Every day since you emerged protesting into the rude glare of fluorescent hospital lights you’ve known mother. A person {we won’t even speculate if gender enters into it} who makes rules picks gravel from cuts puts dinner on the table at 6 o’clock {most} nights. Rescues. Listens. Teaches. A person who exists for you? Maybe those haphazard take-out food nights when dinner was distraction, maybe you glimpsed my shadow behind the mother mask? did tendrils of untamed mixed silver hair slip free when I wasn’t looking? Or did my carefully muted wild woman howls escape in your hearing? Did you wonder at stealthy footfalls on full moon nights? The creak of the long-since-locked kitchen door giving away my yearning to be coated in her silver light... I never was like all the other moms no matter how hard I tried to stuff my round wandering self into their mold. Our house smelled like herbs and oils and all your friends noticed. I wrote with the voice of wildness and tried to heal broken souls while healing my own. Maybe the harder I tried to look the same the more different I seemed? You who are fragments of me wrapped in unique and wonderful souls… who do you imagine I am?
© 2016 Tracie Nichols
All rights reserved.
*First published on April 24, 2016 at Kind Over Matter as WHO DO YOU IMAGINE I AM?