Triptych

Words have come...slowly.
I didn't know how to hold space for them at first.
The first man offered to pick me a poinsettia, but I was in my camisole, lame, and failed to open the door.
I listened to the teeth-gnashing outside. It was only one hour that night. Only the one, but he came back after, and brought with him his pack and his kin. Burned down our sleepy little mountain town, and sliced off my mother's braided gray. That old, long gray I wouldn't live long enough to. Only, we didn't know that at the time. My mother thought still I had a soul safe from reaping, that my bones weren't inscribed already in the skulls of carrion above.

I buried my mother under the porch, where my father refused to live. I told stories not my own, just to keep the fire going another hour. My smile gets loneliest when they begin to leave, so I latch myself around the neck of rockabye sailors and toast them the names of children long buried. I make a point of carrying inside me all those which have been lost, and shrug the wary from my bones, and skim when the Universe bids me listen.

The ways in which they kill, how they pellet their epaulettes through the cracks in my window. When the time comes, I just won't know what to do with missiles. I'm frightened by war, but suspect also I lack the meat on my bones required for peace.

They said they'd be home in time for dinner, but I knew better than to listen. My son had in his eye that glint that fills a mother's nostrils with goodbye. There's nothing you can do to keep your children from becoming who they are, but still, we try.
I said to my son, before, I didn't want him to leave. He replied he could no longer afford to stay, and in the space between our once-samed two bodies, it sounded like a similar thing. He left. I stayed. And waited for my grief to carry me.

Fewer words. As noted. First week of July. First times. Moments of transition.

I've thought, always, that rather than follow each other as a natural progression, the three have a tendency to co-inhabit the self-same body, just switching places in the driver's seat. I feel now, today, at a sorts of exact epicenter. Between the little girl and the one who dances for roamers. I have yet to endure the old one's admonishment. I have yet to see who I'm striving to become. So for now, this is just hello. Happy #threetunetuesday, @ablaze. And everyone else.