Karrie Waarala - The Sword Swallower's Mother Speaks - a poem

The Sword Swallower’s Mother Speaks

I don't recall now what stole my attention,

one of my other children tugging at my nerves,

or my husband barking at the gardener,

or maybe just the way the sheets billowed

on the clothesline like sails.

But when I looked back down to my breast

I saw milk flooding my son's tiny face.

It gurgled down into his lungs, his eyes

mirrored the shiny distance of my own.

My boy didn't know enough to gag,

just kept working that trusting mouth,

and I still wonder if it was all my fault.

If I was the first to smash the gates of his throat

into a wide open invitation to danger.

His childhood frayed me. The queasy rush

of finding him with butter knife pressed

against his small voice. The need to break

all his pencils to stubs too small to swallow.

The bullying jostle of his older brothers.

The hostile smolder of his father barely hidden

behind the dinner table evening newspaper.

Eventually I hummed loudly enough

to almost wash over the shouting as I

scrubbed crusted blood from the steak knives,

learned to turn away from his lacerated tongue,

the restless hands, the bruised knees.

My throat never let loose the words

that would teach him how to choke.

The night he left I listened to the cloth

of a young life being shoved into bags

and did nothing to reel my boy back to me.

I just whispered to his closed door and went

to bed, tried not to be relieved in the dark.

In the morning I pretended not to notice

that everything sharp was gone.

By Karrie Waarala. 
Copyright belongs to Karrie Waarala. Please click on her name for more information about her poetry. “The Sword Swallower’s Mother Speaks” was published in Issue Thirty-Two of The Collagist, March 2012.