Kasha Martin Gauthier
This poem arose organically from conversations with my daughter and from my grief after losing a parent. There’s a time when we tip from childhood to adulthood, and I tried to capture that. As a parent now, I feel that moment differently than when I was the child. We have the current moment together and also, “someday”, things will be different. The cycle continues.
one bear says to the other bear
Each day my daughter tells me
a new “bear” pun. Laughs at herself.
I laugh too, but not for the same reason.
Someday this will all be over.
I force a laugh at each bear pun.
She knows it’s my fake laugh. Neither of us care.
I say to her, I’m doing the best I can.
“Bear” with me, I’m doing the best I can.
It’s not a joke. I don’t know what I’m doing.
But I love her enough to try.
I love her enough to let her soften me
when I am only hard edge.
I’m going to land her in therapy,
I just don’t know for what.
I don’t get to choose.
Someday my house will be empty.
I’ll wonder what my daughter is saying
to her therapist. Maybe,
she’s trying to place her mother
into her life. I don’t blame her.
She didn’t get to choose.
Some nights, rarely now, she’ll ask me to lie
beside her as I tuck her in. I try to put that memory
in my pocket where it won’t get lost.
Someday all she’ll have left of me
are memories of these softness’s.
and memories of other, unsoft things.
We both know this will end, someday.
Lying beside her, I’ll sing the songs we both know
I’ll sing, one more time.
Kasha Martin Gauthier lives outside Boston with her family. A member of PoemWorks: The Workshop for Publishing Poets, Kasha’s work is forthcoming or has recently appeared in Pangyrus, Constellations, The Healing Muse, Slipstream, and Soundings East. Kasha’s poetry is informed by her family dynamics, upbringing in New Hampshire, and careers in business and cybersecurity.