I Am a Writer, Anyway

A poem on writing in motherhood.

The washer hums a steady spin,
a thought arrives, then slips again. 
It catches light on something small,
a phrase, a line, I can recall. 
But soap and water tug and pull,
before the thought can form in full.


The baby cries, I lift, I sway,
a metaphor dissolves away. 
It lived a second in my head,
between the words I almost said. 
Her eyes flutter, her breathing slows,
the sentence fades, nobody knows.


In the steam, my shower warm,
a perfect stanza starts to form. 
It echoes soft against the tile,
as I stand, listening while. 
But towels wait and time is thin,
and by the end, it’s gone again.


So if my pages are still bare,
and all my words dissolve in air;
if all I write is lived, not penned,
and starts far more than I can end, 
I know that in the everyday— 

I am a writer, anyway.

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