Affirmation

She knows change. She is no longer afraid, she says,
of insistent fists pounding solid oak, at 3am,
demanding entry to inform innocents
of fathers torn from center,
pounding, ripping holes in reality.
She is a grown woman now,
she has breasts, arms that can soothe,
a smile that invades eyes deeply blue
beneath the brown. She knows that sixteen years
wasn't enough security to cherish her lifetime,
but she knows that she will find him again.

She used to have terrible dreams
after his death, and would run
to the arms of a Succubus impersonating
her mother, and be raged at, masticated,
and spit out as an unfit replacement--
and she...soaking up all the fury
of her surviving parent,
because Mom really couldn't be
deliberately, hurting me, could she.
She needs me...needs ME.
I can consume, she thinks
(in the light of the refridgerator door)
cushion myself, and I will never be completely
devoured. I can shut the door on the monster
and feed it through the crack near the floor.
But she is bereft again when she finally sees
that sometimes Mother is only a title, unearned.
Distance is the key, she hopes,
and it only takes her eight more years,
to find the lock, and break free.

A new town, and new life, centered around
inconsistencies and unknowns, but it is better,
much better, yes, she tells herself, as she weeps,
alone. Four walls, a mattress, and a cat,
but they are hers, and she smiles, and shakily
begins building, with odd bits, warped boards,
muddy foundations. She polishes and trims,
and admires her reflection in dime-store dishes.
She walks in the moonlight, and hears
the world sleeping and renewing. Shopping
for groceries some days is bittersweet...the sudden
gurgle of laughter from and infant tickled by
it's mother...the husband's hand comforting
the small of his wife's back as they stroll
domestically up and down the isles...she sighs
and smiles, and stocks her own small space
with pleasantries and necessities.
Soon, too soon, she has open-house,
pleased with her work--and her company
arrives, and he flatters and lies, and he decides
to make hers, his. Nurturing cannot
keep walls from crumbling under
drugged selfishness, defensive anger.
She absorbs blow after blow, surviving direct
hits on her naked heart...cringing as she
discovers her mother's face screaming though
his skin. And it only takes seven years for her to stand up
and walk away from a contract eroded with the acid of abuse.

When she finds herself again,
it is like opening a present wrapped in
shiny, delicate foil. She carefully chronicles her discoveries,
and as the words flow onto the crisp new paper
she catches them up again, drinking deeply,
and tasting herself. And it only takes her three
years to stand naked under the unforgiving
light of the bathroom mirror
and love the way her roundness smooths
the edges and warms the space within.
She doesn't need affirmation
that her beauty radiates...she knows that
she is creative, vibrant, alluring.
She knows that her bruises have bred
compassion, and disappointment has
wisened her. No, I don't need roses shorn
of thorns, or placating phone calls,
or promises of undying devotion, she vows,
but he barges in and gives them to her,
and she is enchanted by the story.
He is different, she assures herself, he won't
lick the plate dry and leave me empty.
She swirls giddily in illusion for a time,
soaking up happiness and saving it inside
a secret place, like a squirrel hoards nuts
for winter. And three months later, as summer
evaporates into fall, he slams the book shut
on her outstretched hands. She collapses
underneath the weight of betrayal,
but it only takes a year for her to rewrite
her own chapters.

Laughter wiggles it's way back into her
heart--a cursed swath of optimism penetrates
her armor, piercing the fog around her life
like a beam shot from a lonely lighthouse
in surging seas. She knows, at last, she can stand alone;
but the little girl was taught to share...
A stranger arrives, uninvited, unannounced,
whispers that he has followed her light, that he needs...he needs...
to immerse himself in her flame.
And with those magic words, he wraps
his crinkle-eyed smile around her, so much
like her father's, and she dims her light to
fuel his own. She shudders with longing
as he finds his way home, and she finds
herself lost...and it's 3 am...
and it will only take the rest of her life...
to light the path within.

Tara Colarell
Copyright 1999