A walk in the park
Featured in ‘Sunlight Later’
On a perfect sunny Saturday
we take a walk in the park with our
brand new baby and the sky is the bluest
blue and the trees are the greenest green
and there is this glistening sheen and shine
to the day, a gentle breeze in the leaves, a rustle
of the reeds and the swans serene, slide by on the
navy water as the lily pads bobble and weave and
I just want to bite you
walk two steps behind you
scouring for some resentment
of righteous reckoning, some new
transgression to bare teeth with, rip
flesh with, furious I have so little to play with
and you (confused) say what’s going on? and I say nothing
(in that way we both know means it’s definitely something)
so you ask me again, and I can’t quite put my finger on it
but I think it is maybe
because I am hot, hungry
because I am so fucking tired
because I can’t do this anymore
because I can’t not do this anymore
because my body is split open and spilling
guts, yes guts, and gore and blood and milk
because I almost died for this, would have died for this
because all you had to do was stick your penis in me, then
wait for nine months
because I don’t know who I am anymore
because I know I don’t care who I was before
because my bones crack and cry because of this
because my heart flails bare because of this, ready for
impending catastrophe - and now this stupid joy is choking me
because I can’t leave now, now love too much to leave, because I
felt the shadow pulse of another world come screaming through me
because I am standing on the edge of terrifyingly happy, and the fall
will surely kill me.
But I don’t say that, instead I hurl
something generic, far-reaching like
well, you never listen! and then start crying
so we stop on a bench and the tears fall
hot heavy plenty my face smeared with snot
and I mutter sorry for being a dick, and you (confused)
take my hand and say hey, it’s ok, it’s a lot at the moment
and I nod and we don’t say anything for a while, we just
sit and watch the trees.
An extra note
Motherhood can at times push us to the limits - physically, emotionally, mentally, spiritually. It cracks our hearts open in indescribable ways. But that new expansive love comes from a place of sometimes-terrifying depths, giving us a heightened sense of everything that could go wrong and of how much we have to lose.
This poem was written after a walk in the park during which Koji (poor guy) had felt the brunt of my multi-sensory overwhelm—an overwhelm so hard to describe to someone who is not ‘in it’ with you. I was about five months postpartum: still recovering from a difficult birth, feeling exhausted from all the feeding, feeling downtrodden by the COVID lockdowns, and generally just SO pissed off. My feelings felt completely at odds with the beauty of the day and our surroundings and, I don’t know about you, but sometimes a ‘perfect’ shining day can make my negative feelings all the more heightened. And I was looking for a fight—or at least someone to direct my intangible, boiling rage towards.
The poem starts serenely with a description of the beautiful scene, and then there’s a surprise turn with the line ‘I just want to bite you’ . From that point, the narrator fills the space with all the reasons she is experiencing overwhelm, building momentum with the repetition of the word ‘because’ as she tries to find herself in the truth of the moment. And her partner (thankyou Koji) tries to understand, but is unable to breach the gap between the physical and lived experience of motherhood and what it looks like from the sidelines.
The way the lines are laid out, each increasing in length, is meant to mirror the idea of walking and steps. And the title ‘A walk in the park’ refers to not only to the actual walk itself but also makes an ironic nod to the English phrase that is used to describe something as being easy or straightforward. From my experience motherhood is rarely (if ever) a ‘walk in the park’. But it is - and continues to be - absolutely worth it.