The Empty Nest Diary

Trigger warning (for mothers of young ones): After growing inside your body, and nursing at your breast, and comforting himself on your lap, and later on your shoulder, there will come a day, when your child, will live, somewhere else. And he’ll open the door, eager to share his new home, and you’ll weep, behind your sunglasses, because it makes no sense to your heart that he is grown (and flown.)

If I was a Lioness,
I would pick him up
by the neck,
and nuzzle his face,
and lick him all over,
and tumble with him in the grass,
and lay on my back so that he could rest his head on my breast in sweet
surrender. But I am human, and we withhold such
devotion, and so I kiss his cheek too many times, and sidle up too
close on the couch, and hold his hand for an entire
block, almost. But my thirst is unquenchable–flesh
of my flesh, bone of my bone, heart of my heart, this
man. this man. this man? So that when we
part, my favorite drink tastes sour, my salad wilted, the crepe in my mouth, a weight, not a pleasure; the sun
barren, the water grey, the sky
hopeless, even above Lake Champlain, even the chocolate
too bitter with the certain defeat of
Mother. I was 13
when my breasts began to
ache, and home alone on a Sunday
afternoon, watched Born
Free on the colored television in the living room, and released all the
tears held inside, not just mine, but belonging to time–mothers,
lovers, reunions–like the one today, which left me with a belly of grief, which instead of swallowing like I often do, I released, with weeping, all the way to
Skinny Pancake, but not before a small Vietnamese woman, who lives in Montreal, rose from Bernie’s park where she was meditating with dozens of others dressed in bright yellow t-shirts–stood up and approached me to share the blessings and atrocities suffered by the practitioners of Falon Gong in China–hearts extracted and sold–and I lifted my sunglasses off my face, and we embraced, eyes shining, grateful for our connection and our capacity to know and share pain.