The women in my family
could make a meal from almost nothing.
A bone. An onion.
Whatever the men had left.
They could also make a childhood
disappear beneath a clean tablecloth.
I learned from them.
I washed the good plates.
I carried the terrible things carefully
so nobody would hear them touch.
When I had children,
I thought love would make me new.
Then one afternoon my father’s anger
stood up inside my mouth.
My child looked at me
and waited to learn
what kind of house this was.
Lord, I wanted to explain.
I wanted to bring out the evidence—
my childhood, its locked doors,
the years I had survived
without a witness.
But there was my child,
alive in the present,
needing something
my suffering could not excuse me from giving.
I had prayed for deliverance.
I had imagined it would feel
like something leaving.
Often it felt like staying:
beside the small bed,
through the shame of an apology,
without adding but you must understand.
God, how fiercely I wanted
to remain a good daughter.
Even after everything,
I wanted the women before me
to turn and say
they knew what it had cost.
Some never did.
I am learning to grieve them
without placing their grief
in my children’s hands.
Christ meets me here,
where the old anger rises
and I have seconds to choose.
Sometimes I catch it.
Sometimes I hear what I have said
and must go back into the room.
Forgive me.
You did not deserve that.
I am listening.
Such small words
for work this hard.
Tonight my child told me something
I would have hidden from my parents.
I felt the old house stir.
I let my child finish.
Afterward, I stood at the sink
with my hands in the warm water
and thanked God
that I had been told.
B🤍
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