Have a Great Vacation

Sarah Guerrero

I.

There’s a joke mothers make: mental stability is overrated!

A month at a psych ward sounds like a vacation!

 

It’s not that mental illness is a laughing matter, but a joke

in bad taste

sometimes feels like the only way to say motherhood

makes a psych ward sound fun.

 

II.

The gaslighting of men:

How hard can it be

How was your vacation? (maternity leave)

A c-section isn’t really giving birth

 

Of doctors:

It’s just anxiety

It’s just in your head

You need to calm down

 

Of the generations that came before:

It was harder for me

You’re ungrateful

You’re not doing it right

 

Of silence

 

When you cry out.

 

III.

When my baby was new I held him to my breast and he cried

and cried

and cried

 

I couldn’t cry, but it was ok

he cried for us both.

 

One night, I found myself alone

at the top of the stairs, and an idea like a little bubble of clarity

popped!

in my mind and I thought,

what if I jump down these stairs?

 

IV.

I heard on TikTok

A pastor (the kind I used to listen to)

say how men biologically have far greater endurance for physical

labor and an impressive ability to cope with extreme stress.

 

V.

Some time–I don’t know, after the Enlightenment maybe–

after God became Male and White, they plucked the birthing bodies from

their midwives

and their mothers

and their sisters

and their aunts, to lay on sterile hospital tables and they said

when I say go, push for ten.

 

And then they sent them home with tiny

black holes of need

(the babies)

 

But! But! But!

 

The mothers’ own selves were black holes of need.

 

VI.

I heard on TikTok

A pastor (the kind I used to listen to)

say how men biologically have far greater discernment and rational thinking

making them more capable of leading than women who have less

discernment and rational thinking.

 

 

VII.

But I wonder how many men have sat inside a house

with people they have grown in their bodies, and kept those people living

crying

struggling.

While their own minds implode on them.

 

 

VIII.

There’s a terrible joke mothers tell and in the way that

all the best jokes have a kernel of truth inside and let us say the

things we can’t say out loud, this joke begins:

a month at a psych ward sounds like a vacation!

 

Image Credit:  Alex Pasarelu on Unsplash.

Sarah Guerrero
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