Where (i am)

where am i?

i'm buried under the laundry, and the dishes, and the fears of mothering well, you know the kind--it holds a standard and tells you not to fear; you'll never make it even close.
but sometimes i see past it all (not past the piles of folded clothes, ever) and believe, for moments at a time, that I AM enough, and certainly my little boys turn to me in all their clamor and sticky hands,
and though there is an undoing in mothering, there is a putting together again in the being needed.

i am needed; it buries.

i'm hidden behind homeschooling, teaching /m/ and /p/ and trying not to yawn my way through child sounding out words. i peer out in mild jealousy at starbucks mother in yoga clothes, who've actually been to yoga and look limber and trim, and i drink my cold coffee with my wrinkled yoga pants, and think, if they went to public school, then maybe i'd 
but it's not true. i wouldn't. i'm still carrying all this weight "post-baby" (*the weight of the world is love) and it's okay, sometimes. i have a friend who wishes her belly would stretch taut and scar with the growth inside. she wears her scars in her heart instead, and smiles while she waits. i'm learning.

my hair grows long like insecurity, and i pierced my nose to say i'm tough. these are my inconsistencies, and they serve to shield when i feel insubstantial. the parts of me that want to write books, or poetry, even blogposts... she's here, but she skirts to the margins of the everyday. every day rises with its needs, and the she- separate- from- the- rest, she lingers like a wallflower waiting to be asked to the dance.

so, i don't know if i'm here.

i know where i am, and here feels far away.

but my there needs me here, too, so perhaps i can try again? we'll see. 

(*the weight of the world is love by allen ginsberg)