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AI-generated graphic by NightCafé for The New Verse News. |
My four year-old comes into the bathroom where I sit.
He turns the toilet paper roll slowly, says, It’s a nice day
for peeing. Thankful for the body and its routines.
And so am I—thankful for emptyings and intakes,
the food soon to be had, then had for days after. Thankful
I will eat more than a side salad. Thankful this holiday’s lie
of peace between buckle-hatted colonists and Indigenous
victims is obsolete. Thankful we gather anyway.
Thankful for what won’t be at the table—china and silver,
political scuffles, sullen drunks. The chain-smoking
grandmother’s green bean casserole. The pedophile
grandfather’s electric knife. White-knuckled silence.
Thankful for the Peanuts meme my sister texts,
that after all the fallings-out, we’ve righted the rowboat
called Family of Origin. Thankful I’ve been back
on antidepressants for a week and feel like having sex again,
or at least a hug. That I can forgive myself for not missing
someone recently deceased, but feel the burn of grief
for those who do, light a candle at the empty plate.
I can forgive myself for singeing the cranberry sauce
and buying the wrong-sized pie crust, and not extrapolate
that I’m a failure. See, I’ve been fumbling towards sainthood,
but now I’m aiming at stable and decent and good enough.
Thankful to host rather than be hosted, to have more
than leftovers to offer. Thankful to prepare every room
for guests, to cross each threshold and see traces
of my persistence. Thankful my son gave me this poem
and that I could receive it, knowing there will be days ahead
when verse will flow like gravy, and days there will be none,
and my mind will feel stale as the cheap white bread
we use to make the stuffing. But there will be days.
There will be days.
