It’s a physical pain that returns me to a sense of revery,
a depth of love I had been longing for. This body
once turned herself into a structure
in which my child could sit upon a perfect shelf.
My hip became a shelf, the most loving adoring shelf
in which my girl could rest.
She had a seat and my arms that reached became the seatbelt.
*
The embodied ache exhausts my every cell with its reckoning
that she is no longer here to sit upon her perch,
to drape her limbs across and around me.
I graciously welcome this haunting experience of missing.
*
I still sit with the unanswerable question, “did I do enough as a mother?”
I am careful and kind with myself in the asking
but I wonder how I could have done more.
I lived in the land of magical thinking for many years
of my sweet girl’s earlier life. What was possible
if I prayed, begged,
negotiated with a realm that I am actually still unsure about.
It was my hope to be powerful because, I was a mother who wanted to do more.
Could I give this body of mine in exchange for that body of hers?
The answer was revealed over time.
*
In the years since my sweet girl has been gone,
this body,
the one that still breathes
has not wanted to stop loving in the ways she came to know.
*
The muscles and bones along my spine knit themselves together in love.
Nature’s amalgamation of fascia and minerals altered a pattern
made for one purpose into another, that was for her.
But there is no more girl to sit upon my hip.
*
I am now asking the fusion that served willingly
to allow me to return how I once was,
or at least adjust once again
to a placement that supports what is required now, for me.
The beautiful and necessary joining of my own physical landscape
is still devoted to what it came to know.
*
How wondrous I find this body of mine
as she righteously fights to remain in her knowledge of tending.
How deserving of my respect and admiration this human form is.
There is no refusing what needs to be felt
as my tissues become more differentiated
under the considerate strokes of one who offers healing.
A necessary severing is not without awe.
This body reorganized herself for my child,
was willing to change shape, to love a girl in the most physical way.
This body hurts as she is being asked to change her shape once again.
*
Sometimes we must hurt
if we have made the choice to love.