more of daddy

i live in a town of 1,000, and everywhere, boys with mamas. boys with grand-mamas. visiting post office, grocery store, convenience, some with strollers, others with hurry-hands and others texting tattooed, tiny sons tugging, wishing mommy would stop running and tell him to stop swearing.

i see long legs and short and stained clothes and clean and freckled noses peeling-burn and eyes the shapes of tears and i wonder, does someone see them? hear them? know them? little men, soon fathers of next generations.

and where are the fathers? i see mamas, no papas, and where are they, lifting brown legs high, swirling, swinging, laughing, protecting from boogie monsters and fast cars and speeding bullets and being the heroes in their little boys' lives? but heroes are history and all these young ones have are tired women with bruises of their own.






and i stand still amidst the swirl of a town of too sad, and i see him. husband, (to whom mother said i'd never be able to submit, for i never submitted to father), and it's taken years of scaling backwards into the nothingness of self and realizing he knows me, everything, and my skinny shoulders need his broad ones and together we make life in the form of a boy who laughs a lot. and i see him walk towards, boy on broad, and he's tickling and boy is laughing and he's swooping and boy is gasping and begging for more of daddy, and i stand and admire. my son's hero. a man amongst boys.









-day on beach, all sand and sun and watermelon-sticky
-grandmother's hand in mine, worn and wrinkled, her face so small and sweet
-husband telling me to send my worries away to the sea
-son saying mama and pointing to me
-large trees that shade me when sun scorches
-weeds that need pulling
-flowers that need smelling
-house that needs packing, and husband to help with that
-people that need hugging and loving and being with...
-chocolate and wine from friend