I feel full, ample, and ripe. Heavy. The branches of my life succumbing to the weight, leaning over, as dancers preparing for a performance. Lilting. Slowly wilting.

To live one thousand lives, with abundant imagination, to be grateful for blessings, and pass tears of sorrow and mourning, is how I want to exist.
Instead, my ripe flesh gets nipped at, fast and furious, by a swarming cloud of hungry piranhas- my daughters. A tenacious pair of strong willed personalities, aged four and two.

I want to use my abundance to nourish the world, with my creative presence. To create images that arouse emotion, evoke analysis, and generate discussion. My struggle, an unexpected contrast: my ambivalence of sacrificing myself to my daughters daily.

Reading “The Shadow Child” by Beth Powning, I hungrily gobble and devour her written word, metaphors of blossoming women and bountiful gardens. Bursting from the entrapment of the seed, striving to grow to the light, wilting, and regenerating. In time, I grow jealous, cantankerous, at her seemingly blissful love of centring herself around the nourishment and development of her only child.

The reigns around my neck pull tight, the corners of my mouth cracked and bleeding from the pleading, plundering, pulling of power struggles. I want to break free, run like the wind, my luminous mane trailing behind me like a comet’s tail.

I want to run, dance, leap, and twirl, to know myself, and not have to share it with the sacrifice of motherhood.

I want to be free… if only in my mind and spirit. I want to be serene rather than surrendered and trampled.

I want to escape from the prison of my glass mason jar, and stretch my monarch butterfly wings, smile in awe of my wingspan, the delicate power of their fluttering flight.

I want to sing soaring high on the wind above, for all to watch in wonder.
I want to be, and perhaps one day I shall, if only I could be patient, and remember.