May 1, 2020
Dear J,
This morning we feasted
on the bodies
of graham cracker bears
the one snack I remember
my parents bringing me from Poland
where they would go to smuggle caviar,
furs, and fake Adidas. What I would give
for their life of crime?
My mother in her mink coat
leaning her head out of the train
window to catch a glimpse of silver
bullets that later she would describe
as burning wolves.
May 3, 2020
Dear L,
I just stepped in dogshit
looking down at my phone
to write you I'm learning
to go easier on myself.
This might be the hardest
lesson. I'm learning it's okay to want
fresh whipped cream inside
mediocre coffee out of a pod
because it reminds me
of kofya glise, an entire
pitcher of instant grounds,
chilled and topped with
ice-cream, bitter finished
sweet since childhood.
I guess you call it a float
in English, the moment
cream dissolves to perfect
white fur or cloud or skin
I hunger for in any language.
How counting life in coffee
is as Soviet as it is American.
How I was never aware
how truly rancid my breath
turns after, until this morning,
shit on my shoes and mouth-stink
filling the inside of my mask.
May 9, 2020
Dear J,
I’m worried that I worry too much
worry that son A isn’t kind to son B
and that son B will internalize all of the
stolen toys and shoves and seek his
vengeance on son A and really
I’ve barely spoken to my brother in years
so what do I know about forgiveness?
I am desperately trying to learn
from the women in my family
who will forgive you before you’ve
done anything wrong. And J
this is beautiful and terrible
and dangerous and what I am saying
is I’m worried about the murder hornets.
May 9, 2020
Dear L,
Happy Mother's Day! I simply
had to write you that today
I wanted nothing more than to be
away from my children, from myself
as their mother, from everyone celebrating
us as though we are doing anything
more than what we have to. I love
my children the way I hunger.
But no one has ever celebrated
you for not starving, for being full.
We are mothers to desire first,
but after, it's mostly momentum.
So when my son yelled, "Happy
Movie Day" instead and daughter
bit down on my nipple, laughing
at my tears, I kept going, L,
mother, just another name
for constant motion.
May 11, 2020
Dear J,
My favorite genre
of Mother’s Day gifts
is the clever coffee mug:
Tired as a Mother, M(aster) O(f) M(ultitasking),
Volleyball Mom, Soccer Mom, Hockey Mom,
Dance Mom, Dang You’re Always Right Mom,
World’s Best Mom, Best Mom Ever, Best Coffee Drinker
Mom, I went to Florida and All I Got Was this
Coffee Cup Mom, Boy Mom, Girl Mom, Llamma Mamma,
Little Mom of the Prairie, Mother of Dragons, Mommy Dearest,
And my personal favorite, Home is Where the Mom Is.
And J, this year’s mug was wrapped in a grocery bag
light pink with red letters
Mom, est. 2017 written across the handle.
It was the year I cried so much I could
have flooded each cup in the cupboard.
A therapist told me that it was just a bad case of
the Mommy Blues, the color of endless water.
June 5, 2020
Dear L,
When I say I don't remember
my body before
children, I don't mean
before the stretch marks
clawed their way from pelvis
to breasts or breasts turned sad
birthday balloons, hovering weeks
after the party, deflating slow enough
to be painless. I don’t mean
the color of overripe plums
sunken under the eyes, the same
dark around the collar bone,
skin stained sleepless.
What I mean is
I don't remember
this body
without a child
trying to burrow their way
back inside. I don’t
remember my body
with itself, L,
was there ever a time
my flesh was so utterly,
longingly alone?
June 29, 2020
Dear J,
My son spent the morning with someone else
and I am ashamed to say that I thought
I’d feel immense relief and yet I keep thinking about
the years I let my hair grow so wild it was permanently
tangled until the morning I stood in front of the mirror
and cut it all off. How even days later I kept running
my fingers through the air, expecting to feel the weight
of what was once a part of me
now severed. It will grow back my mother said
but never the same.
June 29, 2020
Dear L,
We cut his hair yesterday.
Rusted scissors and three months
of curls like worms after a rain
on our bathroom floor. After,
he ate a lemon sucker,
had better dreams, and woke
smiling. If only it could be
that easy for us. Worms and rain.
Neither drowning nor severing
will get in the way
of their survival. If only
it could be that easy.
June 30, 2020
Dear L,
Here’s what I want
to leave in June:
the storms; the pumping
but not the breast milk
it brings; my daughter’s
fevers; my son’s hands
hitting/pinching/scratching
at whatever body is closest
when his anger overflows
like the bottle of bubbly I forgot
in the freezer; the sticky mess
it left everywhere; the baby
cockroaches I found stealing
sea salt to build a mound
behind the kitchen sink; the salt,
all of it, the way it looks
like broken glass on marble,
sharp enough to wedge
under my fingernail, to draw
blood; my children’s hair
and nail clippings; mine too;
the grays I didn’t think I’d have
this soon so I tweezer them nightly
but in the morning, always more;
the endings, so many endings;
the times I’ve doubted
my marriage, motherhood,
and hands. Here’s what I want
to take: hands and the moon
because they find their way
into everything even if
my children will never
get to hold either
long enough.
June 30, 2020
Dear J,
When I told my father that I needed
therapy he didn’t know what to say.
He sat with his tea for a while
almost speaking and then not.
And in this scene I believe
he saw me in a new
and broken way, a shadow of
what was once his best friend.
It is one of those moments I
will remember for a long time
and not the silence but the movement
afterward when he nervously
grabbed the remote
to show me The Sopranos
episode where Tony
tells the Silvio, Paulie, and Christopher that he is seeing
a therapist. In the scene Christopher storms
out of the room at the news but my father pauses the scene
right before this happens to tell me
Even Tony needed help L-chka,
and it is these words J,
that I play over in my head
like a prayer my father’s disappearing
voice moving me through
the darkness.
