What I Don't Tell Her

She calls her night my morning, finals, senior

thesis, friend-stuff. How are you maman? The

French she uses when feeling soft, when feeling

the language of her birthplace. I don’t tell

her I’m running late, more sirens this morning

as I am brushing teeth, her father still asleep

rushes to get dressed and we wait in the stairwell.

Too late to make it downstairs. Too tired to run. I

don’t tell her I miss her, that without the

waking-to-sleeping-full-on-stay-at-home mom hat

I wore, for more years than I remember—I have time

too much it seems sometimes—on my hands

which means space in my brain. Time to think,

which means obsess. I don’t tell her I have a new therapist,

that I’ve started having flashbacks, that sleeping is

hard but waking is harder, that every single day I

bring to a close I tell myself—you survived. I don’t

tell her I have always felt this way which is why

when she was little and she and her siblings would

fight, I’d sometimes run to my room and cry. Not

even knowing why, I don’t tell her the guilt I feel

that I didn’t show her a healthy-expression-of-feeling,

that I tried to give her a better life than the one I

was given and maybe I did but still—I fear

the man who lives an ocean away. Who still visits

my dreams and whispers in my daylight ears.

I don’t’ tell her I fear even the smallest of things—

if the shop will have ripe avocados or if the

cashier will understand my bad Hebrew or if that

new friend is just pretending to be nice. I don’t

tell her that despite all the yoga and wheat grass

and vegan diet the memories still live in the fascia

and now nearing my sixth decade I’m starting to learn

to make peace with it. Maybe even love it. Maybe even

love—me. On good days. Which today wasn’t necessarily

one, until she called. I do tell her—I love her, I am proud

of her, I am here for her 24/7. She says, of course Maman.

You don’t need to tell me, I already know.