Susurrus

Virginia Woolf once wrote, “A woman must have money and a room 
of her own if she is to write fiction.” 

The monotony of days came riding back upon a plague.
Stories and poems sit, unwritten, on broken doorsteps.
I struggle to catch a glimpse as I pass 
but a child’s voice calls Mama away

I revel in this time, a reprieve from hustling society 
and capitalized schedules, this unbroken time with
my children, a front row seat to an interactive play.
But where is the room to breathe? 

To wander amongst the tales in my head, get them down 
on paper before they scurry off. Where is the space to be un-
judged by a teenager’s idealistic critique of my real-time feminism?
Her questioning as a chisel against the pedestal I once stood upon. 

COVID has forced my hand again, to play the tireless mother.
I claw the air, sometimes suffocate under the weighted blanket 
of domesticity, yearn for a freedom that I might never claim, but
knowing, too, I will long for these days, once they are gone. 

There is profound love and contentment in the hours
of card games and dress-up, mis-sung lyrics and dance parties, 
bedtime snuggles over books as my girls learn to read, form letters
on paper to write their own stories, a newly discovered magic.

I will call to my shadowed stories on the porch, beg of them to stay 
until I come to meet them in dark hours while my children sleep. 
I will pray this is enough to stem the frustration, and breathe in 
deeply the hope that I can prove Virginia wrong.

©Anne Fricke