How we hate yelling at them,
our children, how we scream.
How we have to yell at them
because they play every game
possible instead of just doing
their school work or chores or
or or, and how we know we’ll all
do this again tomorrow.
How we mutter to self, “Don’t worry,
guys, I hate me too,” every time we
yell at them. How society made us think
we have to yell. How all children are
emotionally dysregulated now. Aren’t they?
Are they.
How we wonder is that nature or nurture.
How that doesn’t matter anyway, in the end,
does it, because what does it change, how
does that change how you respond when you
have to respond either way. How we do all
this before a burning ocean.
How we do all this. How our body falls apart
like a branch blown out of a tree as we yell at
them, and so we say, “Good. You deserve it”
to ourselves. “Break.”
How we know before we say it that Good
derives from God. How we follow a book’s
guidance. How it doesn’t work. How they
still fight & spit curses. How we check the
parenting book again. How it doesn’t work.
How we don’t work. How they spin & spin
to category five. How it all crashes. How we
crash. How we love. How we weep, how we
sleep. How after Maundy and Good, Saturday
doesn’t have a name. Saturday is just dead.
How we comfort ourselves by walking at night,
looking up through staghorn branches to a
waning moon and Orion or at least what
white people call Orion, how we comfort
ourselves by knowing we are flesh to feed the
smallest ones, we are skulls waiting to feed a
garden. How we are supposed to be responding
to an email right now.
How instead we are taking a deep breath that
catches on now, catches in our throat, catches
on the sorrow of everything, how we would give
up if it weren’t for our mothers.
How are our mothers.
–
Mitchell Nobis is a writer and K-12 teacher in Metro Detroit. His poetry has appeared in Nurture Literary, The Night Heron Barks, Hobart, and others. He facilitates Teachers as Poets for the National Writing Project and hosts the Wednesday Night Sessions reading series. Find him at @MitchNobis.