3/16/24
something that keeps pleasantly surprising me: I thought he might’ve just loved me for my milk, but since he stopped breastfeeding altogether, it still seems like he loves me like as much as ever.
something I was wondering…like it took 15 consecutive months of no sleep for the sickness to show up in me. So how long to reverse that, or can it ever even be reversed? Like do I need great sleep for 15 months straight (definitely have not got that yet) to counter it and then I’m back to normal? Or will I never be normal again? I don’t remember ever being this sensitive to foods before. I feel like I was maybe more resilient pre-pregnancy. I feel like, I don’t know. That I just eat a little bit of dairy/egg, and the way it shows up on my skin is like disproportionate to the amount I consumed. maybe I’m just resentful that I can’t have these things, and I wish I could. maybe i’m still healing, and i’m just impatient.
3/19/24
oh. Something so sweet, like maybe the sweetest thing ever. yesterday accompanied Hunter over to my parents’ house, then Hunter, mom and i went out to the playground, and when we came back, grandpa (my dad) gave Hunter this plate that consisted of spinach leaves with little dinosaurs on them. I wish I’d taken a picture, but I was so delighted and surprised in the moment, and I didn’t have my phone directly on me. Grandpa had bought some kind of dinosaur mold/cut out thing so that he could cut veggies and fruits in the shape of dinosaurs. So they were like tiny pterodactyl mangoes, and beet T-Rexes, etc. As soon as he showed Hunter the plate, grandpa asked, “Hunter can you tell me what kind of dinosaurs these are? you can eat them, you know!” grandpa told me that he bought the shape-maker in hopes that it would get Hunter to eat more veggies. And it just really touched my heart, that he had thought it out and searched for it, and purchased it, something so good (and fun) for my baby.
3/21/24
R’s been working so many Saturdays lately that i’m tired of asking him if he’s working Saturday and being disappointed when he says yes every time. i’m gonna stop asking i think, and just assume he’s always working on Saturday and then be pleasantly surprised that rare day he’s not.
haven’t written a poem in a while. i guess it’s all getting to be too much, and the following came out.
March 19-21, 2024
where did this war start?
it all started in someone’s mind- thinking he had been wronged.
now white phosphorus
now a father with nothing left to say but “my children died cold.”
*
i have this sinking feeling
there are threads within me
connected to the hate
that shapes weapons of war.
*
i didn’t like physically
start this particular war, but still, this
gut realization that
whenever i, from the quiet of my
suburban American home, stumble upon
a small reason that sparks
ill will within me toward another being
and i entertain that will for any amount of seconds
and do not immediately like
rebuke it in the name of god, i am tapping into the psychological, spiritual,
emotional root of the problem-
the entire problem – i touch it.
I don’t want blood on my hands or even fingertips.
*
Like if we don’t:
- pay attention and choose to turn from all forms of ill will
- go sit by the river
- seek out the forest and pull it around us like emergency blanket
- choose to swim and bask and daily baptize in deep unconditional love,
all is lost. all is lost for us.
*
where did my hell begin? It began with thinking i was wronged.
Not with the wrong itself, really. it began once my mind sought vengeance –
because then the wrong was on nonstop replay.
*
So what if you are wronged? So what?
Do you really want to go there? Do you really want to go down that hole? Waste your one life blind with self-pity?
*
Lucky I held no military power;
look at what could happen.
Look at the innocent
watery eyes of these
children, the dead eyes of these
dead children, closing –
each of them grew and swam
so many months in a hopeful womb
to end up
cold, in pieces
*
if all atrocities start in
the mind and heart…
then so do
healing, solutions, renewal.
*
kneel with me
now, surrounded by nowhere
in this layer of brown broken leaves.
Marriage Journal 