Deep Dissonance

 Cognitive dissonance

A mismatched set
Of beliefs

I believe there is no way
I could ever be
Enough
For my children.

I know
I am also
Everything they need and
All they have.

Fighting for them, me, us
Inside myself
Every
Day

Cognitive dissonance assumes, maybe,
my morals were gathered
Piece by piece
From various thrift stores and
Dollar Generals
Mismatched. Confused
Gathered together in gray
Areas

So my questions crawl to the corner of my mind and fall back on the patterns
I chose
To create
Tire tracks or trenches?
Regardless, I dug these and know
That the digging brings peace

If it try to
Resist the strident chords it persists
Starts
Screaming at me, spitting
Venom

I wonder, though
If you feel this rattling
As deep as your fragile
calcium constructions
Can you heal

Enough to bring down
Brick walls
Decades old
Generations
Old

Is it a bird?
Or a paper bag in a wind waltz?

Regardless, I will try
Search to see the bird so high
In the sky it's a speck
I will try
To keep my eyes (my heart my brain)
Open

I see what surrounds me
Children in their teens (no more
diapers!)

Turn the gear on those small black
Binoculars and
Focus:

22 years by the blackboard
Wearing orange plastic glasses
Twice as big as my head

Sneaking down alone, to the river so often
it twists
Into trips
for four, or three
Usually 2
All of
You
At times, though!  (That's a win)

At the boat launch I'm  careful on the algae
Moss lip pf the stone's edge
Never standing
Just

Floating

With you
All.  Sometimes
Always, though,  the
Reminders

About breathing in deeply
Slowly
Through your nose
Smellll....

Scent is the brain's
Tardis
Transporting you anywhere
any time

I know
KNOW
K. N. O. W.
I will not always
Be here for my children.

They
know it.
That deeply, too.
Since they were 7, 4, and 2.

So I make them
Pay Attention

This year it is
2 to almost 12
And their tears
Were torrential
Hurricanical
A body,  my child’s,
Body

Trembling with tears
Born of joy
Yes, joy.
And
Because he's known
Since he was barely born
That joy
Is not

A requirement
Expected
Permanent.

I feel older
Than I am.
A long war
Will do that.

I've been at war
With life
Not death, who comes no matter what
But
Life

Life who is there
Regardless of if you want them
There
Then, at that moment,
Or not

Life
Messy,  unfocused, confusing
With pimples and stretch marks
Wrinkles and belly rolls

Warm rain followed by a bright
Silver moon
The smell of the Potomac after dark
Watching bright yellow birds
On house high sunflowers

Because we have choices
We don't have
To see
Any of it

I've been at
War
Since he died. At war
To heal
So we return to what it means...
Cognitive dissonance

Joy and pain
Life and death
Hope and despair
All at once
Deeply felt on a
Structural level

From The Trail Of Tears to
The Nazi Holocaust
From a dislocated elbow
To a Peace Corps rejection

To a backyard pool
A warehouse gymnastics gym parking lot
3 c- sections and a golden retriever

The best way
The only way
For me to show you
Now
That I love you
Is this

Winning the war
With the cacophony
Inside me
So they have something special
To see

A discordant depiction of
A loving cruelty
A universe that gives you
So much
And takes half
Before you find your feet

And beauty, still.