The Blood & The Bones

I wake up in bed to the sound of a mower cranked in a yard close to my own. It’s the Friday before a long weekend. All the husbands are outside before it gets too hot & the wives are finishing up the dishes & tending to the littles in their lives. And I wonder if they are happy. I wonder if they are fulfilled. I wonder if it is only me who feels this way. Like my legs are halfway to six feet under already. And somehow the sound of the mower, of this every day machine, makes me feel smothered in a life I did not wish for.
How do I say I don’t fit in this repetition and routine? I cannot. Not without guilt & misunderstanding that comes with rebelling against what they believe is the natural flow of the years we must live and breathe.
But, is this living?
I am a mother & the stability that I work to provide for my son is in his best interest. I run the rat race for him but I don’t care if I win.
But I so long to run from here & see mountains & rivers & purple skies that don’t touch the ones I stare up into every night.The same stars.The same darkness.The same.The same.The same. Fill in the blanks. It doesn’t change. I want to soar through the air to places where I don’t know the language & drink in colors of lands far away. I want to have dirty hands from hiking through forests touching moss on trees & grabbing handfuls of the cool dirt under the soles of my feet & slip naked into pools of water & float in their serenity. Swallow foods, smoke, & stares of people with skin darker than mine. I want to wrap my arms around the waist of a man on a bike & not even ask where we’re going. Sit in cafes sipping coffee writing a novel I always said I’d write. Drive cars down highways that look like they never end or lead to this place I have to call home. I want to be free. To be a gypsy nomad vagabond there & gone letting my feet touch down but not for too long. I don’t want to lose what I have. I want to take it with me but I know those things don’t go together.
We must live in this box & travel the same roads & watch the same sunrises.
I will live here & die here if life wills it to be. I will do this because of my love for him. I do this for him and not for me.

LL