Please, says Vivian,
come into my room with me.
She tugs on my shirt.
It’s my shadow,
she says, it is following me,
and he is mean,
he is every word for mean.
Her eyes blink slow.
Her face holds my face.
Is it a boy? I ask her,
confused by her pronouns,
and she tells me, No,
it’s a girl changing into a boy.
I do not understand
and it doesn’t matter.
I hold her in the small room
where the light is diffuse
and our shadows,
whatever they are,
wait for us outside the door
along with everything
that shines.
“I do not understand,” you say. Yet you then say, “I hold her in the small room” Seems to me, you DO understand. Further, you close, “…and our shadows,/whatever they are,/wait for us outside the door/along with everything/that shines.” Ergo, you also understand the understanding that comes later. (Brilliant and sagely-wise, closing stanza, that.)
And, of course, Vivian will continue toward that level of understand, and further beyond, because you’ll walk the ways there, along with her, hand in hand.
What’s it like for a wordwoman to hear her scarcely-four daughter say, “…and he is mean, he is every word for mean.”?
Ay, Probrecita! The world, indeed, is a diffused, shadowy, shining place. Even seemingly physically apart, I will always be with your to meet and to greet it. Hand in hand.
The closing stanza is what makes all the confusion throughout the poem justified for me. As reader, I’m still not clear (pronouns or not, but that was.a great way to convey the logic of the child) what Vivian’s turmoil actually is, but I get the sense from the hug that you as mother accept it, whatever it is. Notice, I used “it” as the referent for the turmoil!
Lovely to see you again, fine lady of the poetry.
So, yesterday’s (1/4/21), “Better Half,” sent me to this poem. (Had we met, yet, when you wrote this?)
Here I am, these seven years and some months later, being stuck—like a gong—by this poem (again?). Of course the shadow would be transforming, playing at-the-moment favorites with sex.
And of course it’d be waiting near where the light is diffused. Of course our shadows are with us always, until the end of the age. And why wouldn’t it also be, “along with everything [else?]/that shines”?
what a wondrous memory you have–and you have no idea how important it is to me to have this poem unearthed, wow. I had no memory of it, but it’s very helpful right now.
thank you, friend.
Accessing your poems via WordPress—it’s the only way I have of both indicating I like the poem and leaving a comment—there are two of your older poems suggested. Hand in Hand was one of the suggestions for, Better Half.
While I do have a connecting-remembrance mind, that wasn’t the case, this time.
No matter. I’m so happy to have played whatever part in returning this poem into your orbit—and at a auspicious needful time;
A bouquet, each, of hugs and kiitos to you, amiga.
WordPress has totally saved me in terms of organizing my work for me! Not sure how I would ever find anything without it!