5/11/2018 Poetry By Lauren BenderWe have to love what no one else claims You make yourself sick on so much nothing, holding this question like a candle that overwhelms itself with its own wax and dr- almost drowns. You tilt it to spill the excess, intestines clenching at the threat of not having light. You'll do anything so you don't have to search for her in darkness, your mother. Where is she, and was she ever able, even for a moment, to fall in love with her daughter? I will never know how to let go of needing satisfaction, which comes in different forms and on at least one occasion comes in cakes. Actual cakes, hundreds of them in the fantastic gloss I'll slather across the memory later, but six at the most. I was the queen of cake-walking at the carnival, winning and winning and walking each cake to my house, then walking back to school to win another. By the end, our kitchen table was covered with cakes, all their own flavors and colors, unique as snowflakes, tempting us to eat and be nurtured. No one gets so lucky without a degree of obsessiveness, and I wanted endless cake less than the drug of success. Besides, neither health-conscious parents nor their bored children were desperate to join me in my round and round musical quest for overdressed sugar, for a delicate prize to adopt and cradle home in the summer heat. Now what I can't remember is how you reacted to this attack by cake. How could you have known what to do? Did we finish them all? Did we graze and sample, share them with neighbors, keep them as table decorations for months? What a colossal problem I must have created, caking up our lives when you were booked solid with loss - your mother, your freedom, yourself. Was she ever, even for a moment? The only theory that makes any sense is that this happened nearby, as in somewhere in our city, my city, she surrendered you to the proper people, and on you went, rosebud lips and blond curls like a gift-wrapped American darling. But at a certain point I convince myself you were shipped by box overseas, direct from a windmill in the Netherlands where my overwhelmed grandmother is still standing, swaying, hungry for both of us. Good, Better, Best It had to be about winning, when you held an egg in a spoon and ran madly down a field, because if you were fast and never dropped it, you would be egg-in-a-spoon hero, like you had been cemetery-spelling hero, roller-skating-chicken-dance hero, three-legged-race hero, carnival-cake-walk hero, talk-back-to-your-parents-and-then- scamper-off hero, poetry-writing hero, and I-can-do-this-I-can-be-a-leader hero. Tomorrow is Monday morning, or another chance to be going-through-the-motions hero. You are an exceptional girl, everyone can see that, but in case they can't, you pick another thing and start to pursue it. Raise another egg and train intense eyes on the red finish line sprayed in the grass. the morning I was crowned, that evening I went to you, asked you to bless my hands, though you were not there, and I did not use those words; I said, to paraphrase, I had been given power. My cheeks flushed, I stepped back, waited for you to celebrate this victory, my growth, culmination of what you wanted. You were not alone. All my life I heard I would regret this, I would regret that. Anyone with actual power knows you take it. There is no passive voice; you take it because you want it, because you have believed you will have it from the beginning, and the only confusing part is wondering why so many situations allow no room for a coup. I needed you to tell me this was the end of insignificance, though you don’t know the end any better than I do. But the end of insignificance to you, at least, which is why I really asked you to love me, more than anything love me. I could not tell if you understood the question. ![]() Bio: Lauren Bender lives in Burlington, VT. Her work has appeared in IDK Magazine, The Collapsar, Gyroscope Review, Pittsburgh Poetry Review, Yes Poetry, and others. You can find her on twitter @benderpoet.
Rachel White
5/11/2018 09:56:18 am
This woman's writing never ceases to amaze and inspire! Comments are closed.
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