Stripes

“Where do I feel?”
the worksheet asks,
and a gingerbread body
waits for color—  

sad blue,
happy green,
fearful yellow,
angry red. 

My son is striped
like a candy cane.
Red and green, until you
reach his head,

where there is
so 
much
yellow. 

I see him hurting, and
my body is a paint can
filled  
with yellow.

What if I can’t
take his pain away?
(Of course I can’t
take his pain away.) 

One day, he threw a shoe and
shattered a window,
then just kept throwing. 
My cool lasted until it didn’t,

then anger spilled like red paint.
I screamed at the screaming child
until I felt
only shame. 

I pressed my cheek against
the cool tile of the kitchen floor,
sobbing,
shaking.  

“What the point is even the fuck?”
I asked the ceiling—
even language
had broken. 

But a jagged hole is still 
an opening, and
I found myself laughing
like a stripe of green,

and for a moment, it seemed
that love holds
every color,
and maybe that 

is the whole
point. 

Photo by Jack Douglass on Unsplash

The Prompt

Parenting is a doozy. Being parented is a doozy. No one gets it right—not if “right” means flawless execution. There are, of course, better and worse parents, and there are easier and harder childhoods, but I doubt that anyone survives the experience of family without wondering at least once or twice what the point is even the fuck.

And then, if you are lucky, there’s the flip side. There are the moments when everything else in life feels like too much, but family—the one you are born to or the one you choose—is the thing that keeps you almost sane, the thing that lets you believe there might in fact be a point.

For today’s prompt, spend some time reflecting on your experiences as a parent or as a child being parented. What colors, moods, feelings, images, or stories come up for you? Perhaps you are working to reparent yourself—to offer your present child self whatever it is they needed and didn’t receive in the past. Is there a poem tucked in the folds of this process?

You might also consider other examples of parenting to which you’ve had a front row seat. Have mentors appeared in your life who offered things that your actual parents couldn’t? Have you been that sort of mentor to someone else?

Set aside a little time and space to let the images and feelings swirl. I know this can be a tricky area for a lot of people, so take care of yourself. If your own family of origin stories hold a lot of unprocessed trauma, start somewhere else—considering mentors or other parents and children you know well, for example.

I look forward to your poems, friends!