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We all have challenges, right? Bink has rocky periods, when her anxiety rises and OCD rears its particularly ugly head. There is no easy or quick fix for these times, though we try many things. When she hurts, I do, too, with my whole heart.  I know things will change, because they always do, but today this how things look from my window.

 

 

 

 

 

Today’s Truth

I could write all sorts of words,
poems, songs, I could
take pictures and post
on Facebook, showing
the world
(or the twenty who’d read it )
my strongest doing fine face

and maybe share
that one of me in the Florida sun,
beach behind, smiling into the iphone
all shiny teeth and Aren’t I lucky
and
See how lovely it is here.

Truth is,
this morning
my daughter awoke
navigating a battlefield
familiar and grim.

Her foes—
anxiety, obsessions,
compulsions—
filling her head
with demands and
little terrors,

and I can only
pierce my skin,
pull my heart through the hole,
weave my love into a soft armor
and toss it around her shoulders,

and from the periphery,
shoot blind bullets
into the invisibles
she wrestles with,
use words
more powerful
than theirs,
hope to gain ground
through repetition.

I can only
turn my whole self
inside out,
reach into my center
and grab steaming handfuls
of my fortitude and
my perspective

and fling them towards her,
tell her this is medicine,
this is salvation.

 

–Melinda Coppola

 

 

 

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