all poems and photographs
© by Maya Stein

all poems and photographs
© by Maya Stein
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Thursday, January 08, 2009

hallucination / resolution


















One thought she could always lose a few pounds.
Another thought she should be making more money.
Still another doubted her talents, her hope, her heart.
There was another who felt she should be building houses
in Africa, or tutoring the underprivileged. She believed
that unless she saved something, or someone,
she wasn’t doing enough.
Another kept picking at her skin, pulling grey hair
from her scalp, contemplating a chemical peel or Botox.
Still another berated herself for her lack of motivation,
her television watching, her near-addiction to the screen,
how much useless trivia she knew about movie stars.
There was another who kept standing perfectly still,
waiting for the light to change, but would look up, disappointed,
when it didn’t, and felt impotent.
Another wished she was a better cook, a better writer,
a better wife, or lover, or mother, or daughter.
And another chided herself daily for not taking the singing lessons
she'd been thinking about forever, or kickboxing, or sculpture.
Each felt a little less than, unremarkable, anemic in their power.
They did not know that the others existed.
They sat in their living rooms and the couch was like an island
they imagined no one had ever heard of.
Their little cups of tea would grow cold, and they rose, uncertainly,
from their cushions and entered their bed and slept, eventually.
And when they dreamt they dreamt of their wholeness,
which is to say they dreamt of their nothingness,
who they were without what they firmly believed to be true
of their lusterless, shameful existence.
Asleep, they forgot exactly what it was they were so hell-bent
on transforming, and during that first hour after waking,
it stayed with them, this amnesia, through the stretch out of bed,
and the shower, and the first mug of whatever it was they drank.
And thus forgetting, they gazed absently through the kitchen window,
and a stream of light beamed down
and stayed there just long enough they could feel a warmth there,
a small circle just for them.

4 comments:

deezee said...

This is remarkable. I could blather on and on about how I connected, how I reflected. Quite simply, you speak to being on both sides of the love equation and distilling it down to an essence. (does that even make sense? can I blame morning brain on my end??)

GailNHB said...

Here's to finding that circle, that warm place, sipping whatever we want to sip - and staying in that place. To less self-chiding and a lot more self-love. To writing and reading and laughing and loving. To encouraging each other to stop all the lonely imagining.

Love this piece, Maya.

Di Mackey said...

Stunning, as usual.

I loved this one, and read along, nodding my head.

crazymumma said...

Years ago I was in an immersion program in Quebebc. It was a large group of people, I was younger, childless, vibrant fresh.

and there was a group of loder women, my age now most likely, or a little older.

and we called them the grey ladies. For their carriage, their spirit.