(Poems about Rebuilding, Hope, Motherhood, Marriage, love and Fear)

My marriage began smoothly, as if everything had fallen perfectly into place, like a puzzle finally whole. We fit. And we grew.

When I met my husband, it didn’t take long for him to offer me a ring and promises. We shared the same dream; a home to come back to.

The time when it was just the two of us was simple and beautiful,

though learning each other had its quiet trials.

Still, we always found our way back. We forgave. And forgiveness never took too long.

Then the babies came, unexpectedly, and in twos.

I still remember the shock on his face, his search for the right words, but words escaped him.

He simply nod on every Doctors precaution. Its actually funny to see my obgyn bossing him around. Not long after, the pediatrician completing their role to bossing my husband around.

And I realized, the kind of love that people talks about, 

I saw it in his face.

The kind of love who fight.

Who protect.

Who struggle to make it work.

To My Husband:

Since you choke on after the 3D USG of our twins, I knew, the girls knew.

You are the pristine water that fills in our home,

We drank of you every day, and still, you thrive to provide,

I hadn’t planned for two best friends.

But there they were, the greatest surprise, the gentlest miracle.

I spoke to each of them before they could speak back,

telling them to be kind to one another,

whispering secrets of the world they had yet to meet.

From the moment they were born, still unable to tell a smile from a reflex, they brought me a joy I couldn’t measure. The pregnancy was hard (one of the reasons I chose

not to walk the path of reproduction again) but never once did I doubt that they were a blessing.

Through it all, the carrying, the nursing, the breakdowns,

their cries, and my own; we bonded beyond language.

As a first-time mother, I still don’t have the words for the connection we formed.

But it feels, ethereal. Otherworldly.

And after they arrived, something within me changing, a trembling, delicate vulnerability.

I had multiplied my heart by four.
Obsessively,
carefully,
I held each piece tight against my chest, like a child clutching precious candy, terrified to lose even a crumb.

That softness, the so-called vulnerability, the weakness.
seems to grow an effect for me. 

The sleep is getting hard to get, the rest is harder to enjoy. The worry. 

My mind constantly at a war protecting my family from unknown enemy.

defending the fragile world, we had built with nothing but love and prayer.

They say a flamingo loses her pink after birth,
And this, this is the journey
to earn that color back.

For me, the journey comes in words.

I will write this chapter in present times.

Because for this one, I’m actually in the timeline.

It was not a memory I try to recall, but the life I lived.

I remember, and I will quote the Poem here, from The Long Poem of Linus Suryadi; Pariyem’s Confession which I think describe so much the feeling of early motherhood;

“in her early pregnancy,

A woman’s body change

Her face looks listless,

Pale and lethargic.

The baby growing on its own,

Filling up the empty womb.

So, the mother’s inner life is shared with the baby.

Just like her physical body.

As though her greatest woman’s gift

Is sucked into her womb

Sucked in to nurture the baby

Who needs the mother’s life force.

See how the mother is careless

Her clothes and hair not neatly dressed

She makes no effort at attractiveness

Her love is directed to what’s growing within

And she neglects herself in the process

Now, who is the goddess that cares for Adam other than the creature called woman?”

-Linus Suryadi AG, Pariyem’s Confession