My Craving Body

It is 10:34 p.m. I am journaling about the difference between what I eat and how I taste it.

In other words, it’s not about the chocolate cake. It’s about the pool of saliva swirling through each bite. It’s about the tongue pressing crumb into ganache, the esophagus readying itself to carry each sweet offering down. It is about my body knowing it is safe. Safe to sit, to enjoy, to receive.

Thoughts spin. I spin my chicory tea with a small spoon, sip it, sip it three more times, having assumed the rhythm of sipping, cease tasting altogether. “How does it taste?” I remind myself. I am learning this lesson.

But I am a mother now. Who has time to learn? I am supposed to have it known, supposed to be able to teach it. Every moment is a teaching moment. When my daughter Maya says that bunnies come from “weathers,” a place in the sky with trees in it, she is right. Who knows? Who dreamt up this earth? What do I know?

I know something. I recorded it today on my notes app:

No “choice” returns such a reward

or feels as good as being confident in myself

no matter the choice.

Lesson in self-trust.

I recorded it on the way back from the library, not knowing where the hell we (Maya and I) would go next, sensing the dreadful fractal of last-minute-decision-analysis-paralysis.

Just go home, enjoy what you see on the way, trust it will be enjoyable.

Something about forgoing the search, relinquishing the constant projected possibility, the ‘that could be fun...’

It’s never fun when I am always trying to make it fun.

Why do I do that? Because I am deeply unhappy in my marriage? Because I am avoiding the terrifying, yet-to-be-diagnosed symptoms in my body? Am I bored with myself? Denying the call? Is it the intrusive voice that flickers “you’re so selfish,” “you should be grateful,” “it’s too late to blossom, you’re on deaths’ door?”

I know that voice is not the true me, as my IFS therapist helps me understand, though it feels compelling. May even compel me to act sometimes. Today, my blood work came back with low white blood cells. Maybe it is marrow cancer. ‘You’re on death’s door.’ Do I spend the rest of my day with a clenched gut and a shapeless terror in my palms? I feel so scared of this body, what could happen to this body. This body which allows me to feel at all. Right now, it wants to split that PB&J I packed for the road. How can I eat with my daughter like this? My nebulous results, her sudden nail biting. Savor it, some voice overcomes me. I become my body. I love this body.

Forgoing the search, I finally decide to take us home. We tail a white van to determine which of the ABCs are on the bumper. The van veered up a hill and we turned off into a New Seasons market parking lot. I texted her ‘dada’ about picking up some free-to-us groceries per his employment there. He did not text back.

How can you accept day old sushi when you want to divorce this person?

When you are a lesbian? When you want to be his friend, not his wife?

Wonder if they have that organic hearty grain bread, or was it the rye?

Wish I could see the shelves. A fritter for Maya? For me?

Can’t believe you are doing this again. Go home.

But it’s free. It’s just going in the trash!

Go home.

I think I am learning something (sub think for know). Make it real. Really real, like breathing into my deep, churning stomach. It is real, as real as anything. I could lose an hour of time following Maya’s lead tracking down the ‘baby q’ fridge magnet. It is lime green, it has a twin, its mother is orange and her Q-tail flicks more right than usual. We have been wondering about this missing Q for two weeks.

Forgive me, Great Mysterious Creator, for forgetting this tender, marshmallow consciousness. For forgetting the preciousness of our bond, when in my overwhelm I demand bedtime, when I have yanked her body out of the bath to cease the splashing, but mostly, for having feared receiving, so deeply, her love. Believing that I deserve to be loved is the necessary prerequisite. That part, I am learning.

Or, rather, unlearning what got in the way. The marital traumas, the bad therapy, the false ‘yes,’ disowning my true needs. Fearing the rejection of my queerness, my shame, even my joy. The residual impact of experiences which triggered such an odd estrangement from myself, like salt draws water from a slug.

The many messes I have created in this fragmented haze. They are not messes I can clean up with effort, but through quitting clean-up crew. Which is to say, quitting appearances, quitting control.

Emerging through the exposed scaffolding of my falling-apart are cravings. They confound me in their power. They are inexplicable, and their truth in my body is demanding. They want to surface, burst, like my squelched afternoon longing to sprint through the soccer field outside the classroom window, or rip off the itchy tights plastered to my thighs. I crave movies, celebrities, scenes from my fifth or sixth grade self: Jennifer Coolidge doing the bend and snap, Britney Spears singing about soda pop, Mrs. Doubtfire pretending to home-cook catering, the sound of her spoon whipping pink sauce against ceramic. I want to enter the scene of Mary Kate (or Ashley?) shoving a sloppy Joe in her mouth with Kirstie Alley. I want to be Matilda eating chocolates with Miss Honey. I want a mother, food, togetherness. I want to squish the floating kiss from Jessica in Roger Rabbit, feel her sparkling ruby dress, feel her breast. I want to punch my hand into a pool full of Jello, empty three-packs of Swiss Miss into a cup and make a warm, sugary sludge. I want Sno Balls from 7-11, the bike ride to 7-11, the bike ride away from home—fleeing those closest to me who know nothing about me.

Who the fuck knows me? The question resounds, like it did three months postpartum at 2:45 a.m. when the breast pump chugged, and Maya finally slept and I didn’t. Frantically searching for ways to sleep, which inevitably led to positive affirmations about not sleeping. Some BBC article about the history of ‘second sleeps,’ the solace it provided me. From the center line of my body, I felt a black silhouette project its borders into the night. I am a wide-eyed animal cloaked in velour sweats from Costco. It is dark. I am surrounded by two sleeping bodies, anxious that I am, once again, the one awake. What is it all for? Why am I here? Shall I put on Sugar & Spice, maybe Home Alone (for some reason), slide my fingers through the thin red seam on a Cheez-It box, forget about something. Everything?

Yes, and, then, no. Either way, skip the berating part. Just enjoy your life.

That berating part, aka mom-guilt/shame/negative core beliefs. It is exhausting.

Let the exhaustion take a full breath.

I wear three rotating pairs of thrifted sweats and fleece jackets, usually bejeweled with vanilla yogurt and marker ink—who am I today? Sick, ashamed, closeted queer, stranger in my hometown. Beautiful, radiant, unnamed being, just like the daughter I bore? Nebulous human with a baby, granted the task of carrying three different stuffed animals into every store, of finding only the perfectly rounded potato chips in a serving, the strawberries without a single soft spot? Usually, all of the above.

I am servant to the utterly irrational, utterly absurd: what is rational anyway? Cue some such about quantum physics, quantum universes, parallel somethings. Cue readings about domination and partnership, power over vs. power with. These irrational toddler demands and nonsensical preferences: they deeply matter to her. Why shouldn’t I oblige? Then I see the clock, feel it jolt through my body, like a stranger suddenly in my ear whispering: you don’t have time for this.

“I don’t have time for this shit.” I heard that a lot as a kid. I also waited a lot: for someone to pick me up from school, eventual rides home from the teacher. I waited to be let into the apartment until my father was done masturbating or smoking meth. Until my mother was done purging dinner, or finally conscious from a bender. Whose time was I on? I took out the confusion on my body, trying to soften neglect with my excitement for food. Then I ‘scarfed’ my meals. I needed so much love I could not find. I went for seconds when I could.

I have to remind myself of my age sometimes, and that I am a parent now. I want to cherish these moments. And also, I am exhausted. When my daughter goes to sleep, I will not. I will enter the kitchen, greet fourteen sites of play, and thirty other sites I have made mental note of. Where to begin? Wash the bottles, wipe the drawers, remove the foil under the broiler? Bend, erect, here, there, drawer and bucket each sand mandala like a gust of wind. Go for a walk, queue up a podcast on divorce, open marriages, coming out, gentle parenting, re-parenting, co-parenting, fuck-it parenting. Eat the half pastrami I didn’t want at a reasonable hour, and need now? Accept the acid reflux, or have the banana and sulk? Laugh? Cry? Fall to the floor, stare through the ceiling, relieve myself entirely of deciding?

If we contain multitudes, then what is True North?

How do I trust myself when any given multitude might be directing me?

I want out. I also want free teriyaki salmon noodles. I fucking need space. Can you grab some water and throw the crib sheet in the wash? I am a lesbian, married to a man. My closet shelf is full of Alchemy books, Jung, the sacred relationship between humans and bees. I frequently say “fricken,” give excessive attention to having a morning bowel movement, and sometimes talk to my daughter like I am ten-years-old. Grow me up, I pray to the universe. I pray I do not have brain cancer, or some terminal disease responsible for all my many strange and seemingly un-diagnosable symptoms. I pick the burnt cheese off reheated pizza foil after dinner like it was the part I wanted all along. Why now, and not then? Because I have changed?

Yes, you have. And you will again, and again.

Sometimes, the craving emerges after a meal. The light shifts. The people leave. Your breath deepens and the sky around you quiets. Your once-full stomach yawns, rearranges itself, opens and growls. You see the golden splotches of crispy cheese adhered to the cookie sheet. It is a catalyst, a trigger; you desire now what was not evident before. Time walks backwards and disappears. It’s after-image remains. It is shapeless and it feels like love. Deep in the radiant innards of a nearby fridge, you could reach for anything. Just then love emerges. It says I’m here honey. Whatever you crave, whatever you choose— I’m here, and I’ll taste it with you.

-Moll Ponkevitch

Moll Ponkevitch (she/they) is poet, single parent, and animal caregiver currently travelling in the Pacific Northwest. Their work explores how poetry (and writing in general) can help create the conditions to heal trauma, fortify self-trust, and support radical honesty. Molly holds a B.A. in English from the University of Oregon, a masters in Consciousness in Action from Southwestern college, and is certified in ecotherapy. Lately, they have been called to deepen their relationship with the wisdom of death and experiment with prose/blogging. To discover more of their work and published pieces, visit barnowlpoetry.com