Endtimes Meditation on Mothering Self-Care1
By Jenn Givhan
have played The Healing Pool on Insight Timer,
rhythms from our small, faceless machines
to quiet ourselves, to scrub as mud from our
cake, crust in our nail beds, our soul beds, our
for calm, & the water
gurgling—those reedy electronic notes symphoning
above that constant thrum of city, rush of social
soothes, for a moment, the fangless ache,
the dry-socket nub we tongue & tongue.
For a moment, we’re drowning in the afterbirth
seal-slick & flat-headed past such platitudes
molecules formed our dust. Before
we burst blacknighted as a blood clot
from the pulmonary thrombosis of a mothered
universe. Her timeless implode.
1The way one cares for a knot at the end of a frayed rope, scissors to a knotted scalp.↩︎
2 Listen, my children, for when I leave you, it will not be of my own accord. Of that I can assure you. Listen, for my voice is a map you must follow, as the río runs south past the border to the belly, there, my children, there you will find shelter.↩︎
3 I’ve hidden in the ticking tocks. In the coded winds. In the stillness still between us.↩︎
4 Hold fast to the forest elephant’s tusks, my brave ones. Hold tight to the green turtle’s shell. And when the brown bear falls fast, hide in his winter-rough hair. I’m sorry I can’t take the saola, I’m sorry to the sisterhood of tigers, I’m sorry to the crossriver and low- land gorillas, and I’m sorry, my deer-hearted loves.↩︎
5Our Huichol antepasados in the Nayarit region of Mexico have called us the dog people, for we have sprung from a small black dog like the chihuahua whose breath smells peren- nially of fish though she has eaten no such thing. She snarls at creatures ten times her size. What hearts I’ve hidden, I’ve meant no disrespect. But I’ve failed in every regard save one. How much I’ve loved you. Though that too may be called ingratitude. Were you ever mine to hide? Use your strong, dog legs. Run. Run.↩︎
6When the last of the cows gave the last of their milk and the last of the jugs filled the landmines, we cupped our hands to the sky and prayed rain. How long could that have lasted? We could have drunk without end. But we remembered the sky had stopped lis- tening long ago, and shut our palms to each other’s dry skin. Children, open your palms again.↩︎
7You wouldn’t let me take a cake to our neighbor because he was the kind of man who yells and throws broken beer bottles into our yard, at our dogs, and a woman might not be safe knocking on the door of a man like that, not even to bring him something sweet to try to smooth things over. And you didn’t want your father to go with me because the neighbor was a white man, and your father, a Black man, might not be safe either. You were eleven and shouldn’t have known truths like that. But you did.↩︎
8 Masks, stronghearts. Put on your masks. And feathers. Find me.↩︎
Source: Poetry (April 2021)