My hair is falling out, the last telltale effects of hormones snapping back to a baseline after pregnancy, and I find it everywhere: on my clothes, in Sprout's clenched fists, in the bristles of my purple handled brush. Outside it is gray and cold and raining, the second day in a row. On the windowsill the seedlings are turning yellow, needing to get in the ground, but it’s been so wet, our boots sink up to our ankles. The roosters crow over and over. There is dirt on the floor. Around the lip of the blue enamel pot that holds the rubber tree with its shiny dark green leaves, dust, thick enough to write my name.
Last night Sprout was up, squirming around, uncomfortable most of the night. This morning it’s me that is uncomfortable, here in this thin skin, ready to cry.
Everything is always a risk. Loving. Trying to put down roots. Giving birth. Going out the front door. Getting on a plane to somewhere, and having it crash out in the ocean. Can you imagine? Waiting out there, with your terror, for death?
Of course I know nothing of terror, and yet. It’s scary here too some days. Here has its own kind of heartbreak: our financial situation sucks and it’s quite possible we could mess things up, have nothing, throw in the towel, go. To where? To what? Even when there are cyclamens, and stretching, and good poems there is always this. A shake up, a heartache, a fight, an empty bank account, a splinter under your fingernail, a bitten tongue.
And some days its hard to see that there is anything more than this: hormones and exhaustion and possible loss. Ostrich days, where all I want is to burry my head in deep and wait for moments that are better, sweeter, less filled with tears.