I stood on a chair
cooking pasta
while my times table sat empty
on the table.
Mom and Dad were somewhere,
not at the table,
probably hiding their fight.
But I knew.
Premonitions whirring in my mind,
sensing what they couldn’t,
what came to be anyway:
separation and leaving.
I spooned noodles and sauce into bowls
for my younger siblings,
reminding myself to switch
laundry over before bed.
Mildewy piles of clothes
sitting on the basement floor,
waiting for my siblings and I to
jump into them like we were playing in a pool,
playing like the kids we were.
Carrying siblings
in more ways than one,
My brother’s legs
tight and permanently in 90-degree angles,
transferring him from his wheelchair
into his bed, his body all skin and bones,
muscles atrophied.
Getting my siblings ready for school
while mom slept,
dad doing coke on the road.
I was too little to be doing that alone.
Apologies won’t fix the lashes
from the tongue; harsh grief words
shared among family
cutting too deep for placations.
Each word said and heard
luring me further into myself.
I am my own keeper, making my
own toast when I was sick.
Alone.
Little old soul, my uncle would call me.
Maybe so.
But I knew I was lost
within the clutches of grief and
loneliness,
picking up burdens that
weren’t mine to carry.
Hiding in the closet or under my bed with a
flashlight and my favorite Junie B. Jones books
ushered me into a reprieve.
Harry Potter books brought me out of my own
reality into another’s,
offering safety and love
within the pages of my friends.
I’d always been an escapist,
just like my dad.
I learned to be a mother too soon.
My maternal instincts are finally my own,
natural and freeing.
No longer surviving and being parentified,
but thriving within the safe attachments of my
daughters and husband.
A mentor told me that I didn’t know how
to thrive, only to survive.
So how can I, twenty-one years
later, begin to thrive?
Tap into the strength
muscles you have
honed, I tell my little old soul,
No atrophy allowed for you, missy.
It wasn’t all for naught.
Take the pain and the grief,
and turn it into
redemption.
Your presence is enough.
Your family now knows you, sees you.
They value your presence.
Little old soul, you will thrive,
If only because you stayed.
For you, and for the two slices of your
heart that now run around.
I forgive you,
Little old soul,
For doing what you knew to
survive alone.
But it’s time to let go and grow.
Learn to trust that people will stay,
He will stay for you and for your daughters.
Now you,
Older little old soul,
Go and Thrive.
