if I have made of my life something particular, and real.
I don't want to find myself sighing and frightened,
or full of argument.
I don't want to end up simply having visited this world.”
― Mary Oliver
because i like to take the shortest point
to get elsewhere i have acquired this habit,
maybe a declasse one that annoys others,
of leaving peeled eggshells in a bowl
which i have also used to serve hard-boiled eggs in
the gesture triggers another round
of name-calling
what a pig, she hissed
because this is how i permit
my months to go by when
the spirit has weakened to put
up a semblance of a fight,
i have nonetheless trained myself
to eat sarcasm & the disapproval
of others for sunday breakfast
& wishing the viand & the rice,
wishing these small graces were
bullets & threats of death instead
because i am seen as the slob, the blob,
the messiest one, the unstable one,
the older one who had long abdicated her
role & duty to be the responsible one,
the one who has heard doors banged at her face,
the one who goes through
a revolving door of employment
till there is no recourse
but to begin where she started
i am continuously
being weighed & judged
no matter the bodily heft i have amassed
to keep me visible to their world
no matter what few riches
i have struggled to gain
& hold them up, here, take them all,
still the marks of the scale say
my worth is low in their
hierarchy of accomplishments & net worth
& it is fine for them
to underline this
because i am this
& i cannot be that
it seems fine again
for them to turn & twist
the dagger of insults
frontally this time
three day ago,
i was harmlessly seated
thinking of some unfinished works
& what line should go here,
what color should go there,
when out of nowhere another said
pity you, though you share
the same zodiac sign
as this blessed niece
you have no skill
like hers to run a house
superbly efficiently
the way she does
& this same other adds
the new malignment
in a growing collection
of snide remarks
with no awareness
that comparisons have
meanings & meanness in them.
this mistress of put-downs
flutters her fingers
in an imperious
gesture of dismissal
& worse, wears the look
of innocence for
having done no harm.
it would be more merciful
if she & the others
totally disown me
claim no blood ties with me
forget i ever passed their lives
than my stoically trying
to bear cut after upper cut
because it is me who also wants
myself effaced from their presence
for this muddled puddle
i call a life to clear up
like a dredged canal
i will will will
in a day not far away
leave no trace
turn white like the bits of eggshell
thrown in the trash
be that insignificant leaf that falls
& no one hears about.
--Babeth Lolarga
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