I Wasn't Going To Write This Week

But I really, really had to tell you THIS

I wasn’t going to write anything this week. I was going to let myself slip into the strange fog of these days between Christmas and New Year’s, contenting myself to sip eggnog at 11 AM and wear wide-legged lounge pants for the duration of the holiday. But I just got a bit of news, and I want to tell all of you first.

I wrote a poetry collection, and someone decided to publish it, and now—as of this moment—it is available and I can officially tell the world.

When Bottlecap Press first said, “Yes,” I raised my hand to my mouth and I cried. Just like in the movies. And then, from the back seat, Vivian yelled, “MOOOOOMMM, BRUDDER JUST TOOK MY TOY,” and all of a sudden my life snapped back to normal and leave it to a three-year-old to help you keep it real at all times.

The next morning I woke up in a state of panic. The words I had written, have mercy, were going to appear in print and I felt naked before the universe. I pulled up the collection and reread every poem, especially the spicier lines, and wondered if there was still time to cut them, revise them, tame them. To make it all feel more safe.

But doggone it. I spent this year shouting from the rooftops that poetry is for rebels and that I am not a genre. And what we need isn’t more “safe” poetry. Gosh, no. Especially when it comes to birth and postpartum life and the tension between being Mother and Lover. We need words that at least try to touch at the trepidation and anticipation and elation and decimation of becoming a mother, and of the new shapes we must take on in the process.

So here it is: The Shape I Take

A mini-collection, a small poetry book, a chapbook. Whatever you want to call it—it’s the words that quite literally spilled out of me in the weeks before Alden was born, through labor and delivery, and in the heightened postpartum territory that followed.

I would be honored if you would check it out. I would be honored if you would read it. I’d be honored if you’d hold onto it and share it and take these words and sew them into the fabric of your own experiences.

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I’m thankful for each of you. Thank you for reading, thank you for your kind and thoughtful words with every post, every notion, every musing. Someday soon—when I emerge from my peanut butter ball Christmas haze—I’ll try to share some more eloquent thoughts and excerpts from the book here. But for now, just wanted to say…I love you guys.