Not Sleeping:

I want to sleep.  I really don’t like being awake because you can’t sleep while awake.  Being awake stinks.  You normally have to do something while awake.  You have to be awake to go places.  I hate being awake.

Sleeping: 

I want to sleep.  I really like sleeping because you don’t have to physically go anywhere while sleeping.  Sleeping is what I would like to be doing right now.  You don’t have to actively think while you sleep.  Let me go to sleep.

oh, rose.

red turning withered,

your veins are still blue and sturdy.

don’t let them fool you into thinking otherwise.

oh, rose.

you still bleed red

and your heart still pumps,

and your laugh is still there;

you’ve just forgotten how to use it.

i long for the safety of summer;

 for sticky drink cups

and lazily strummed guitars.

i cry for you,

and it comes without warning,

from a love that won’t die no matter how hard you fight against it.

there’s this moment between when your child pisses you off and when you react badly, where you know for sure that you’re about to make a bad parenting move, but you decide to lash out anyway.  

for the rest of the day you walk around being very sweet to everyone and repeating your parent-mantra of, “it’s okay to be human…it’s okay to be human…it’s alright for them to see that you are human sometimes…”, but that never feels like enough because you’ve yelled, and maybe even used the phrase, “ridiculous amount of shit in a goddamn pile”, to someone you’ve given birth to,  and that just cannot ever be right in your heart.  your brain obsessively visualizes that one annie lammott line that describes your behavior as being, “like bitch-slapping e.t.”, and your stomach flips with the anxiety that you’ve damaged them forever.  but those fantastically resilient little creatures will forgive you. they will move into your lap easily for story time, and that is when you will finally exhale all the rest of your personal bullshit, and recite your secret parent prayer to no one of, “thank you, thank you, thank you.”, without caring that there’s no one there to hear you.

me-“what do you think we should do for the rest of today?”

addy-“well, hmm…i think we should go to the store and buy ginger ale.  i don’t mean the kind in the bottle that i can have when i’m sick.  i mean the kind in the cans; the good stuff.  then we should get in your bed and take a nap, and when we wake up, we should drink ginger ale in bed.  then we should go back to sleep.  we wouldn’t even be sick!  but we would act like sick people!  what do you think, mom?”

me-“that sounds awesome.  i’m in.”