I’ve been busy the past … days, weeks, months.
Sufficiently busy to lose track of … myself.
All caught up in meetings and conferences,
Improving my teaching, studying a new grammar method [an extraordinary one!]
That’s what we teachers do – we improve!
Or at least we try to..
Always creating a better version of yourself as an educator,
Always looking for a way to transfer knowledge, and, most importantly, to transfer your heart.
Ripping it out of your chest and giving it to others,
Your hands dripping blood,
Your chest an empty cave that used to host life…
[Don’t take it too seriously, it’s a metaphor!]
I’m a teacher, probably one for life, and I am a researcher.
Ceaselessly and obsessively looking for answers,
For that one little piece of veracity, genuineness, candid truthfulness [this is probably a pleonasm but we, teachers, always use more words than are necessary to convey meaning]
I have been looking for answers to ancient questions,
Questions that people used to ask before the question mark was even invented!
So … WHY?
Why did my mother get sick?
Why does she have to fight a monster that grows inside her body?
The same body I grew in…
Why does the Earth still spin around while she lays for hours in a hospital bed,
Her heart pumping chemotherapy drugs that are supposed to kill fast-growing cancer cells,
But also kill everything else they encounter in their way?
Why did the spring slowly but assuredly come while my mother’s grey hair has fallen out?
Chemo targets rapidly growing cells, I’ve been told, but also hair follicles,
My mother’s hair follicles!
So … why?
Why her?
Why any other mother? Or father? Or daughter? Or son? Or … whatever?
I’ve been quite busy the past … one year and a half.
Trying to swim in a dry lake bed,
Trying not to cry when all I feel is a desperate sorrow, a profound HATRED towards an invisible monster growing wings in my mother’s body!
And, trust me, I have never hated anyone or anything,
I’ve always been kind because that’s what my sacred mother has taught me to be.
She hasn’t taught me with words, but with deeds –
Her kindness towards others being a superpower and a curse at the same time.
There are no words for the poem I’m trying to write,
There are no words for the song I’m trying to sing,
There are no words for the PAIN I’m trying to explain because …
Pain, agony, torture, torment, soreness, ache just don’t lexically cover what I feel:
Helplessness, incapacity, powerlessness!
And, mark me, I have never been powerless!
I’ve survived my father’s suicide, loneliness, emptiness, loveless [if that is even a noun!]
So … before I start crying and never stop again,
Before this hatred takes over me,
I’m writing this poem,
A desperate cry for help
In the midst of a fight I am afraid I will never win.
Unless … a miracle happens.
[May 2023]
cristinawinters 