From the Floor

Yesterday I stopped at a local bookstore, hunting for a copy of bell hooks All About Love. I came up short but found instead a book of poetry

I love poetry and that might surprise people. I mold myself to be whatever people think I should be: often settling on vapid, shallow, and dense. I find life easier the smaller and simpler you make yourself. Poetry is intimidating and I'm already terrifying, or so I've been told.

I don't share how many times I cried to Bukowski and the bluebird hidden deep inside my chest. Nobody knows my favorite pairing with red wine is a Kim Addonizio poem. Or that I recite Pablo Neruda learning English and Spanish for my daughter (mi pequena rosa, rosa pequena).

I don't share the poems I collect nor the ones I write because I'm supposed to be the fun girl. The party girl. The girl with the shoes. The girl with the mouth (take as you please, all assumptions are correct). I'm the handler, the strong one, the person you call in a bind. I'm whoever you need me to be, but nobody ever needs a poet.

My worth has been defined by what I can provide to others, leaving me open to vultures who take what they need and render the rest of me useless. Truth be told, that is what I think of myself, a useless pile of bones waiting to be rebuilt by the next Frankenstein that comes along shaping me to his vision of what the perfect woman should be.

But as I sat on the floor reading the first poem in this book, I looked over to my daughter. She was pretending to read a novel (I think it was Grishom) speaking her gibberish to me and I was overwhelmed with love, tears nearly spilled from my eyes.

I love all parts of this human whose face is so eerily similar to mine. Who is the person that she needs me to be? Certainly, it goes beyond the material objects or services I am able to provide. Right?

This useless pile of bones was stirred by "something at work in my soul, which I do not understand." Nobody needs a poet and yet, there I was crying on the floor of Paperback's Inc