A Story from a Slapdash Woman
Megwhoa:
I have tried to write this poem every day since I was a little girl. Today I’ll try again. Today I’ll see how far line-breaks and careful word choices carry me through the backwoods of a story I’ve never been able to tell. Today I’ll spend less time trying to meld the voice of a nine-year-old tomboy, scruffy, threadbare kneecaps, hair awry with the voice of this slapdash woman. There’s a beginning somewhere, and I can’t find it. There’s an echo of a placid battle cry, reduced to spasmodic static. But today, I am emphatic. Today I pull the stopper, let greedy lips drink until they wonder what thirst ever was. Whose lips? Bruised lips. Veracious words elude me. Assenting instead to metaphors and rhymes. Boiling bravery, a simmer. Fear. How would I start, if this weren’t the bane of my beat? Maybe I’d say, “Mama never drank a drop, nor a drip, she didn’t need to; her mother before her had tasted enough gin for the both of them, and probably for me, too.” And from there, I’d fumble with words about the abstruse hole in the wall that nobody talks about, the one that my head fits into, or the way that children are to be seen, and not heard. Say it, she’d say. Do you Fucking Get it? How I chanted that to my four walls, my friend walls. Silent child, I weep for you. But today, today, today is not the day. I was a gust, I was a squall, I was hell-bent on hellfire. To say it, to say all of it, and to say it the way it should be said, I cannot, today - Possibly ever.
I have tried to write this poem every day since I was a little girl. Maybe tomorrow will bear more fruit.
