poetry

Because: Mother Doesn’t Talk About the Past. {poetry}

 

And this is the story I tell you and
I think I’ve told you this because this is
the story of the summer and the house I
used to know and my mother pregnant with
my sister and my father missing

or not missing but not there
and do I notice this?

No, but my father is
not the story, he’s just missing the action and
my mother is pregnant, standing at
the living room window and
where do the rocks keep coming from?

Who is it that wants to come in?

This is the story, okay, this is empty space, this
part that I’ve forgotten, and who
was laughing?

Not my mother, no, because my
mother was crying, pregnant, and
my father was missing

was absent

was away

and is this memory?

My mother doesn’t talk about the past so
I have no way of knowing, but she’s
pregnant and I’m playing on
the living room floor, four years old
maybe five
but I remember the laughter

I remember the stones hitting the
window, my mother laughing and not
laughing, and someone at the back door, and
all stories have an ending but
this is all I know

Sunlight and fear and my mother not
laughing, my mother crying at
the sound of laughter at the sound of someone
trying to open the back door and I
have learned not to ask

I understand my father’s
absence or I think I do

I understand fear because my mother is
crying, pregnant, standing just to the
side of the picture window, trying to
see who’s laughing and she is
crying and she is afraid and I know this

And we are alone, the
two of us together, and I don’t
talk or I don’t think I do

I don’t remember

Don’t remember if I was talking
but I don’t think

I watch her face
can only see the sky from my place on
the floor when I look up at the
window, and she can see more, but
neither of us sees anything

Neither of us knows
but we can hear the laughter

We can sense movement

Someone outside and someone at the
back door and someone else
again and this is the story

This is my mother pregnant and crying
and this is an empty space where my
father might be if he were here

And this is only a memory and
this is only fear

This is only a story with no
beginning and no end and I think I’ve
told it to you before

I think you wanted more but I’m
young here and I’m small and
my mother is afraid,

pregnant, and crying at the sound of
laughter and I’m sorry

Not then but now because this is only a
story, only a memory, and
I was too young but I knew not to ask

I know not to ask

Have never told my sister because my
mother was pregnant and was
locked but it was open

And I am young here and I have no sister
and no memory of any other days and
the laughter comes from different directions
because there is someone and there is
someone and there is someone else again

There is an empty space and
there is everything that wants to fill it

There is the rest of my life spent
waiting for the story to end.

***

John Sweet sends greetings from the rural wastelands of upstate NY. He is a firm believer in writing as catharsis, and in the continuous search for an unattainable and constantly evolving absolute truth. His latest poetry collections include A Flag on Fire Is a Song of Hope (2019 Scars Publications) and A Dead Man, Either Way (2020 Kung Fu Treachery Press).

***

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