Poetry
The Preparation
TaraBray
Go to the woman whose mother died young.
She can tell you the downfall
of self sufficiency. Take your worst day,
move everything under it. Your heavens
will be gray with the smog of toil,
or if it’s her determined jaw you want, take
the file, begin edging off your own bone,
your arms growing hard, angled, your eyes
setting themselves deeply for the kill.
This is the preparation. It is not
like the hunter dousing his skin
with urine, nor the thief, pulling
the black shirt over his body. You need
not pack provisions, nor send up prayers
while you offer yourself broken,
the head slumped and whispering meek verses
as if from the mouth of a beggar.
I tell you nothing prepares you
for a mother crumpled on cold tile, gone
in seconds on a night you were not home.
Imagine yourself untended
as the garden behind the empty house
with crooked shutters. Your clothing will grow small,
tattered, and no one will notice.
This is the stumbling into loneliness,
this is the sermon of a girl's knees tearing open,
this child you will cling to with tired fingers.
How you will hate to pull the woman's voice
from your throat. You'd rather scrub scum
from the bathroom floor, barehanded, without water.
Do you feel what I tell you in the bone dust
you are breathing? You will. It will be everything
you never asked for.