I was no good when you were a child
Loving you wholly, but feeling too much
All I had was love back then, not sanity or time
I worry about the dark parts of me
That might have seeped into those little, beautiful, chubby hands
I am 40 now
Thank fucking christ
The road most traveled is riddled with bombs
I don’t recommend it
I am ok now with the God that is or isn’t
There’s nothing I can do about it, any of us can do
Any of us can do
There are days now when I wholly love myself
…… a magic I have only recently known
I see all my good intentions in your mirrored face
I see all who came before you
I worry so much about all that you’ve seen and felt
Did I tell you our family history too many times?
Did it scare you when I spoke spells at full moons
Made salt circles and saged the house – only to protect you
I worry that you didn’t see……
Me sitting by your bed silently all night, on your tiny blue plastic stool
watching your eggshell rib cage
Rise and fall as fevers ravaged you
Me, just praying to anything, helpless
As the green neon universe circled above us
From your star beam night light.
I was never the same after you came
No one tells you that parenthood
Is actually walking around permanently
with a giant, gaping, aching wound in
Your chest wide open chin to sternum
Just sucking in all the worlds ache
You feel the world’s evil
You hear it breathing just a hair’s breadth away
You have your father’s eyes
But you were blessed with that bright yellow
slash - through blue
Amber in your right iris a gift from your grandmother
The witches kiss
Will you remember our hawk?
She lives in our woods or we in hers
When one of us spots her hunting
We yell for each other to “come as quick as you can!”
To the driveway, like the call of the wild
We fumble for our phones trying to capture her, never succeeding
We stand together as a family and watch her swoop full cyclone circles
Above us, our grace, fierceness, pride, protection
She as big as a human four-year-old
Our goddess
On a very rare, perfect day she will land on our deck
and stare and twitch her regal robot head at us with predator severity.
Originally published by The Graduate Review (Bridgewater State University) 2021
Julie Alden Cullinane is an ADHD mom, poet, writer, and artist from outside Boston, Massachusetts. Her artwork and poetry have been published in Stylus, Plexus, The Boston Globe, The Graduate Review Volumes VI & VII, Chapter House, and recently Red Wolf Periodical. She currently works in academia while pursuing admittance to a Ph.D. program and teaching opportunities. Besides writing, she loves being a mom to her two boys and dog and is hoping to someday teach writing at a college level, or move to the woods to read and write all day, either is amazing.