continued: I want to
drape across those shoulders there's something about strength in rest a slump you could set your cup on nestled close in the square of your neck you can feel that
pull, the momentum an arc of someone's life swung for a moment into your orbit eyes locked and there's a certain embarrassment a caught me gasp but there's no time for we have already seen each other caught by the chance of looking as we move through sound each of us a particular specific story, a satellite of yearning and touch and distance and there is a clinging -- a static realization of love, maybe -- I can only believe love knows many forms before we tessellate and realign and know someone else again on why benchmarks aren't quantifiable and probably we should all listen more and just let go of the idea of any sequence or supposition of what living is; a thank you
a first kiss -- tingling, impossible, heat spreading like a winged thing everywhere alive -- and first rejection and maybe your third or fourth too dragging your self-worth up from bed real talk in the mirror that your watery eyes can't quite fix on, not yet, not even when the next person comes along to notice how you laugh but gradually in the soft dark hours cradled by friends kindling a laughter to split the night with joy despite a growing sense that so much will never be fair, these rich inheritances of what was here and what was made, still when the objects you make with your hands begin to take on a life of their own a delicacy and love and you feel a tug of what is possible, an urgency of maternal artistry, when your mother suddenly and without warning, your onion eating sweater knitting weeping drinking messy home of a mother dies, and you fall, and nothing has light and all is water and when your friend's baby is placed in your arms and you can almost see this vibrating chord humming in the air between them and later, holding the wrists of someone who lived through it all, who saw inventions that bombed the world and fell in love and saw children die before them and all you can think is how soft their skin is, gently wrinkling under your vitality, and how still they seem to be laughing On why every time I read the news I hear the phone ringing telling me my mother is dead; why we have to care about black men being killed even before they come back for the jews again; why every aching grief echoing behind an unnecessary loss is keening, a constant toll at the backbeat of my mind, these days:
I remember the crash the sound of many things falling a low thud of flesh hitting the floor although I was across an ocean, I felt this coming apart felt it all rock and heave, all the boxes we had so carefully, so fearfully stacked crookedly up lining the walls in our broken home to make them thicker maybe we need this for sometime, keep stashing more hidden behind doors There's something about it all being over that makes the reckoning easier maybe easy is wrong, rude even to say but inevitable breaking down an old shed once I pried out the bent nail holding the whole damn thing and watched dessicated boards buckle down topple under the rusted roof, snap old struts this is our inheritance And I can't stop thinking about that feeling the sick snap inside of things falling apart, the center (which was never true) cannot hold, and everything covered in a fine dust of we're fine fine it's fine shaken out, beaten til the particles rise up lit in a sun beam, a dancing devilish whorl of all the layers we've trudged through for those break
of day moments when stars freckle across soft darkness satellites blinking furiously traveling impossibly between lights suddenly, a shooting star, brilliant and gone as the birds wake up, only a few at first pulling up the blue from the sky edges a rhombus of gold falling out the window down the wall music and warmth cascading after onto a dewy blanket ![]() I was raised with the idea of valuing abilities -- that who you were is mostly an amalgam of what you can do, and do well. Since then, my matrices of what makes good have been expanded, reordered, even: how; the manner in which; the kindness and sincerity that can be literally life saving; the shits you give, not what kind you can make; my journey from ravenclaw to hufflepuff. I could talk about this all damn day, but I won't. This said, at no point have I truly centered on appearance as the determining factor in self worth. This seems to be at conflict with the world around me, and I tend to do my part in sabotaging the prevalence of the conversation by simply not having it. It's a thunderdome and I don't like to shout. Howeverandbutso, I got some feels. Maybe it was being raised by a strong woman who lifted boats above her head, carried the ailing and elderly with compassion and with the strength of her legs, and danced her jiggling belly all across that floor. Maybe it was being myopically concerned with feudal systems and sketching beetles and memorizing the cadence of rhymes, and passing the test, and by passing I mean acing or else who even are you; maybe my mind was full of the garden and the seeds I got to plant and the trees I'd climb and look down from and the sea I swam in every day. Maybe it was, less lyrically, not having a live tv in our house. I simply was ignorant, shielded from a lot of the women laughing while eating sad salad while we, women, grew turnips in our little suburban wild, wearing sweaters we'd made that did not flatter and stacking firewood. I can't say. I am grateful for all this. I'm also tired of being told how weird it is. I really just can't agree? I think that uncommon is fair -- it is, tragically, uncommon for us to dress children in clothes that they like in a variety of colors and shapes and sizes, and to praise them for how they do things, and what they do. Teaching littles these past four years, I've been slam-dunked into a world of the traditionally feminine and nurturing; I've been expected to wear nice blazers (we get puked on, y'all) and told, verbatim, to "smile even when you don't mean it, you look too serious." I'm in a privileged enough position to flaunt my abilities (I can teach) and my contract (here I am, my conventional cis white femme looks got me this far, and now it's legal) and push those envelopes. I've been called mannish and direct. More heartrending though is the children. Mostly, I bike to work, get sweaty, wear workday clothes (soft, clean, modest) and practical, ugly clogs for standing and squatting and standing some more. Somedays, I'll come in swathed in a flowing turquoise dress, with earrings, with hair shining (I showered!), and a premonition of spring. Without fail, the army of little girls dressed head to toe in pink descends with praise: ooomg you're sooo beauuutiful. Normally compliments make me rumplestiltskin disappear in a flaring poof of discomfort, but I've learned to say, "thank you, I like this color, too" or, "yes, we are both wearing dresses!" and to accept the warmth of their excitement; I remember thinking my elementary teachers were the most amazing creatures in the world. But the varied interest troubles me; I wonder if they retain memory of their role models on the flannel soft grunge days when I am just as present, just as caring, just as capable; and what about the boys, dressed all in sharks and skulls? Who can they call beautiful in the hopes of someday becoming? I know that it's trite and will weaken everything I've said, but #whatever: I truly believe everyone is beautiful. Not all the time, and in all ways, but it's the portrait artist lens of seeing people for the way they turn their head, for the strength in their smile, for a broad back, for the incredible softness they carry. I can't fully internalize the thin is perfect mantra, though I obviously am well versed in its canon by exposure to this so dominant religion. I bear witness to the many different, imaginary, stupid problems we each face as our bodies preface our identity through the world; when a stranger approaches, we first see them and their form, and immediately go from there. This is obviously an issue of race, of sexism, of classism, and some extras on the side. But I think plenty has been said here before me; let the record state that I too feel it is bullshit. My own body has changed some, not in particularly impacting ways since puberty. I have, to my best understanding, the same body as my mother. Small and wiry, late blooming, strong thighed, quick to build. This is arbitrary. It is also arbitrary that during the last ten years, aerobic super model neon spandex fashion went on the outs and being tiny and a little weird was like, so hot; I've gotten attention from this and deserved none of it, I've been frustrated and charmed by the allowances my body elicits from others. During my childhood and adolescence, my mother became severely depressed and gained a lot of weight, fast; she was always still strong and agile, but the sadness coalesced around her like a protective layer. When she died, my 18 year old body similarly armored itself, and for a few years, I was bigger, more solid, more to move. Change is terrifying, and loss ... is everything. Bodies aren't foolish. They know. Through a grief that could not be rushed I healed with a body that was still healthy, still young, still sexy, still strong and fast, and larger. It should also be noted that this is just my body's mechanism; other people lose weight when they're stressed and gain robust size when they're happy. Etc, etc, etc. Since then, I've gradually recentered to what I looked like before, and behaviorally, come closer to that lightness as well, with some additions (sadness, forgiveness). This makes sense; this is a natural cycle, fitted to the circumstances of my life. What I hate is that people evaluate or even praise me on it appears via my biceps. When you say, you're so fit now/thin/norm-core, I hear, I valued you less when you were bigger and if another change comes, I will accordingly deflate my opinion of your worth again. Which brings us back to worth, and identity, and why this has been ragging on my mind lately. What connotes does not follow. Context is story is everything. We contain multitudes, and deserve the space we take up. Whatever the fuck size that is, however it is maintained, dressed, presented. I guess I don't have a thesis statement; but just a rambling narrative, and a plea, which is to be kind. Perceive beauty in your world. Love well, and often. Give kids whatever clothes they're drawn to, toss them into the vastness of the sea (for perspective, for salt) and reinforce kindness and joy, endlessly, whenever you can, even when it's a stretch. a list of my mother's lovers; if we can't fix the world just try, try to make any one thing more beautiful; a revery on politics and justice
she told me, I had to wear a plaid skirt to elementary school and got sent home the day my growth spurt dangled my knees tantalizingly below the hem, whore girl, and I walked along the road knee socks not quite masking the female body that was made to torment men when I was fourteen, she said, I fell in love with a boy with sandy hair and an apologetic manner, glasses, the works we exchanged crumpled notes, sweet nothings in secret code and eventually, made out behind the pines, off the path winding from the cranberry bogs at sixteen, though, there was someone else, and she grew quiet, so childhood me dug out that old yearbook and there he is, smirking his sexual consciousness circled in a red pen accompanied by, Hey Barb, it was great getting to know you her parents slept in separate twin beds, and indulged in sin twice monthly, I imagine, and came down hard on her curls were immodest, boys were the devil and soon she had quit school and moved to boston as a bisexual loading dock worker she told me, my roommate was a night club dancer and I loved watching her move and we didn't have a refrigerator but we fought like we cared in those snow filled streets and when calvin came along everything changed he brought her to his Alabama family, black and didn't the world stare, she said he taught her to cook, and canoe, and they wanted to have a baby, but he was drafted, and years later came back, changed and she wanted a child and a home and somehow, she said, the long and winding found her way to me I know your geometries your
angularities the division of power between your arms and those thighs the strength of sloping shoulders and too well that fulcrum the about which we turn, negative space where everything hangs in the balance today is draped in a gray shawl of mist
and I find myself comforted in the familiar, the clinging sadness of novembers calling of calamity and anguish, of loss as cleaving as -- and then I wonder why yesterday, the marker, the dreaded anniversary felt almost fine. It was bright, and relatively warm a few clusters of brilliance in yellow and red burst forth on the trembling of naked dark trees and I felt the division, the heaviness of then and the starkness of now, the air and light of a life after, a life in motion and filled again, filled to brimming with small joys and petty frustration, with fear for all the global anger and hate that feeds into more of the same, the home cadence of loving routine softening the wear and tear of fatigue and I wonder, if she had died in the spring instead, if the trepidacious green shoving up through thawing ground would sing to me of lament and memory, or if the dog days of sultry heat brought a molten melancholy if the darkest hour had fallen in the deep snow, with the faith that it will only get brighter or if, maybe, things had been different and she hadn't Warrior cry of the fine; a love note to my friends who want more; a tall glass of cold water on a hot day or, when that fails, a short mug of warmish water in late October
This is to decry the idea that some of us are damaged broken, used goods baggage, heavy, cracked And those others those light carefree ones Those the mythical and self denying Those are fine, fine, I'm Fine, I need For nothing That you have issues problems, sure, irrevocable complexities and a certain way of wincing left But we've all had parents You know what I mean? Who loved you so painfully much or were never there Past stories that layer holograms over lovers and friends and new cities But you're fine, fine, and somewhere may we find the grace of a land where you can be as fucked as you are and find compassion, growth, love. |
Writing, writingA blog of mostly poems, some prose. Recent works will be added to the top, and older pieces are backdated. Please write me a note if you have any questions, etc! Archives
October 2017
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All works are original and copyright Sarah Hirsch, 2017. Please contact me directly if you would like permission to use any images or words. Thank you!
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