Eve Poem
A poem I wrote two summers ago for a thing I didn't do:
When I close my eyes I see my mother. And her mother. And her mother, and thousands of mothers, an army of mothers lining up behind me, Swedish farmer’s wives with grand impossible dreams, and Viking women, fierce and unknowable, and women speaking ancient languages biting their lips and laughing and blinking and crying. Strangers who birthed me. Strangers with my eyes, blue-gray flecked with panic.
And I see Eve at the very start, in a rocking chair darning socks, telling bed time stories to her children and her children’s children.
I think she told stories. I think stories began the moment man became like God, inheriting a God’s need to create. So Eve told stories, and she passed this need down the line, through millions of wombs, through millions of mouths, and as I stand before you today a chorus of mothers behind me silently scream, whose own stories may not be told but whose need somehow still exists in me. That is my inheritance.
So let me tell you a story.
She woke up to a perfect world. She was not her own, she was skin and nerves and bone surrounding and housing a rib. And it didn’t hurt. So it was perfect. And there was nothing to lose.
She had nothing to lose, over and over she remembered she had nothing to lose, so she broke her promise, opened a box her Father kept in a place he knew she'd see it.
She opened it, and gained everything.
Every blow to the head. Every gentle touch that passes through her skin all the way to her beating heart. Every nasty word screamed out a car window, every fist-sized bruise easily hidden under clothing she now wore, every tiny hand reaching for hers, every child calling her name;
her name is Mother.
At the end there was an aching. There was a rush of blood. There were hands that worked. She would do it again in a heartbeat. She would do it for me.
When I close my eyes I see my mother. And her mother. And her mother, and thousands of mothers, an army of mothers lining up behind me, Swedish farmer’s wives with grand impossible dreams, and Viking women, fierce and unknowable, and women speaking ancient languages biting their lips and laughing and blinking and crying. Strangers who birthed me. Strangers with my eyes, blue-gray flecked with panic.
And I see Eve at the very start, in a rocking chair darning socks, telling bed time stories to her children and her children’s children.
I think she told stories. I think stories began the moment man became like God, inheriting a God’s need to create. So Eve told stories, and she passed this need down the line, through millions of wombs, through millions of mouths, and as I stand before you today a chorus of mothers behind me silently scream, whose own stories may not be told but whose need somehow still exists in me. That is my inheritance.
So let me tell you a story.
She woke up to a perfect world. She was not her own, she was skin and nerves and bone surrounding and housing a rib. And it didn’t hurt. So it was perfect. And there was nothing to lose.
She had nothing to lose, over and over she remembered she had nothing to lose, so she broke her promise, opened a box her Father kept in a place he knew she'd see it.
She opened it, and gained everything.
Every blow to the head. Every gentle touch that passes through her skin all the way to her beating heart. Every nasty word screamed out a car window, every fist-sized bruise easily hidden under clothing she now wore, every tiny hand reaching for hers, every child calling her name;
her name is Mother.
At the end there was an aching. There was a rush of blood. There were hands that worked. She would do it again in a heartbeat. She would do it for me.
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