It’s 4pm, also known as
Mama’s So Tired and Kids Are Crazy O’Clock.
I want nothing more than to hide on my couch
with the covers pulled tightly around me.
I want to close my eyes
and drift off
with no other human body
touching my own.
There will be none of that, though.
They are heckling me
with arguments over scraps of paper,
or garbage,
if you were the judge,
and complaining of
hunger and
weather and
clothes that are not just so.
Where is their mother?
Oh, that's right.
I rise up
even though I am
bedraggled,
befuddled and
so, so weary.
He won’t be home soon enough that I can coast.
The TV isn’t cutting it.
I channel
women who are not me;
wise, strong, capable, creative, nurturing
mothers
who push through difficult times and
get shit done.
I channel them,
I become them,
I am them.
I march into the kitchen,
I turn on music and
I find something, anything,
that looks suitable enough
to be called dinner.
They flock to me now:
do I sense a bewilderment in their eyes?
Mom is moving. Mom is happy.
“Mom, I’m a super hero! I save people from pirates!”
he yells as he zooms
around our tiny kitchen.
I am, too, I think to myself.
I get shit done.
***
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