Taken and Costs
Maybe you didn’t hear me
Last October
When I said that
If I did anything
To interrupt the pregnancy
To terminate
By pennyroyal
Or pills
Or surgical scrapings
That it would cost
That something I cherished
Would be taken
And I would want for its absence.
So I bit the bullet
Believed in True Will
And the ability of the universe
to support it.
I was beginning not to trust in you;
Your ability to see
To understand
To provide
To even untangle yourself from the
Frankenstein-like
Parasite that have attached
To your very magnetic self
To a point that they may have convinced you
That you are them
Instead
Of knowing
You are you.
But I was all in,
And once I was
You tantrums grew worse
And I realized that I might have to do this all on my own
Again.
With a hostile
Depressed
Unstable
Unavailable
Non-communicative
Partner who refused to leave.
But I knew the cost
Would be high
So I tried.
(It’s always bad to make life-decisions feeling trapped or in fear)
The stress of stuffing emotions
And walking on eggshells
And trying to make it all better
While getting through workdays
And maintaining the parenting
And wondering where the money would come from
And the householding
And recovery
And life, the universe and everything
Everything felt uphill
And I felt overwhelmed and alone
And I couldn’t figure out
Why you wouldn’t pick up the slack
And help me
Really help me.
Stress creates pressure.
Pressure creates divide
And finally the Powers-That-Be
Had enough of the nonsense.
They thought us children
And petty
And all-to-human
Unfit for duty as gates and pylons to Abraxas.
So the Candle was snuffed out
Flushed out
And reset
“We’ll find better vessels than these for you.”
Me, being human,
Processed my grief
While maintaining the work
While overseeing the living child
And the house
No time off
No rest for the wicked
These are grief and miscarriages that
No one knows about.
Ten weeks pregnant? Bah!
Who would need to mourn that?
I would
But I was afforded no sanctuary
For that grief
Stolen moment by candlelight
And incense
In bathtubs
At the end of the day
And while I tried to mourn
My lover kept wailing;
“Me Me Me
Woe Woe Woe
My pain is so much more than yours
My grief swallows yours in water
I win. Look at me.”
So I shut up
And did my best to process that
On my own
As usual.
What I now know
Is that I misinterpreted the message
Back from October
It wasn’t if I *did* anything
To affect the pregnancy
It was if I failed to protect
My growing charge.
That is when they would expect a cost
For justice
I failed to protect Candle
When I continued to subject
Myself to the increasing stresses
Of work
Of life
Of an immature relationship based on desire
And greed.
So they took Candle from me
From you
From us
For his own good.
And then they shut something off in me
My ability to relate
To you.
Its seems to be just gone.
At first I thought it the hormones
The loss
The grief
The whatever
They say it can take six
To nine
Months
After a miscarriage
To get it all back to baseline.
Then Darkchilde disappeared whenever you were around
Shaking her head in disgust
For not being able to
Fulfill this for her.
Each day you seemed father from me.
Enjoying the superficial
While I stuffed my complaints.
I think what they took was our “us”
And I’ve all the awareness of what I lost
And none of the spark to get any of it back
Like trying for sparks on wet flint.
I still grieve
And not well
I know I haven’t got
Another go in me
That was my last hurrah
That of the five, I only have the one
So I cherish
The precious
My precious
Because so many of the little ghosts
And shadows surround her
Wondering why they do not have her place.
And I have to whisper to them
“Because I am a mostly failed mother”
Flawed vessel
Unable to manifest what I needed for more than the one.
And I cry
Sometimes
Alone
At night
And I know where this river
Traipsed upward
Would find its source
Fifteen years ago and less than a mile away
To the first of my invisible bounds to my progeny
Who never lived.
