PILGRIMAGE

How much of my life have I lived in my stomach?
Clenching secrets in that dark room,
the bilious words: your love is not good enough for me.

I became a good liar.
I knew which smile, which posture
pleased you, the curls, the Buster Browns.
The pretense was constant, it had to be
perfect, had to be permanent.

The lies were acid in my clenched gut.
I longed to say I need you. I am sad. I am afraid.
This would not please you.
These feelings are inefficient, they are weak.
You do not like weakness.

I dream of you running too fast for me to keep up.
I know you will leave me because
my love is not good enough for you,
because I am not good enough for you.
I hold tightly.
I do not breathe.

Now, I want to live in my lungs,
two moonflowers opening at dusk
baring my secret fears to the hawk-moth;
two morning glories opening at dawn,
blue paper leaves unclenching fists,
palms opened and offered.

I want to inhale
cedar bark and seaweed,
old photographs and books,
roadside anise, coming rain, corn silage,

and then I want to hold it,
a taking that is giving, gifting fragrant feelings
like pollen to the moth, the hummingbird, the bumblebee;

and then, let it go,
no secret remaining, all things uttered,
complete surrender, relinquishment.
The giving is the life.

My stomach. I lived so long there, the
heaving and retching and aching.
It was never about truth, it was about survival.
Yours and mine. But you are not the
same mother now; I am not the child.

Now, I am going to try breathing.
I am going to try the truth.
Opening.
Closing.
Revealing.
Waiting.

Breathing.

Sherri Reed is a Junior at Fairhaven College.