Parent Not Expected

Carrie Does Poems

Parent Not Expected

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Hi! This year (2023), I’m continuing my quest to share a poem on my blog and podcast and read it aloud. It’s all a part of my quest to be brave and apparently the things that I’m scared about still include:

1. My spoken voice
2. My raw poems.

Thanks for being here with me and cheering me on, and I hope that you can become braver this year, too!

For Anne & Maxine

Why is it that the dead

Never listen to my pillow talk?

I am tired, but can’t sleep

Again and again and again.

You snore next to me

And occasionally twitch

As the dog snuggles in between us,

Released from her crate

Because she cries so much.

Again and again and again,

Why is that my whines

Never wake anyone up?

Not even myself.

Parent Not Expected

I know nothing about the weather 
I was born in or how the sky whispered 
or stormed. I know nothing 
about the man who helped make me, 
other than his name and he smoked 
cigarettes, constantly, until he got skin 
cancer.  I know his mother had thick, 
dark hair, immigrated here, which was so different 
from the story of my birth certificate
and the ancestors who had been here 
for centuries, taking their time to take 
the land. I know nothing about how 
my mother struggled to hide the secret of me. 
My nose gave me away. My quirky clothes gave me 
away. The way I didn’t fit gave me away. I know nothing 
of the people who came before
me on one side, grandparents, 
great-grandparents, random uncles 
and aunts, their pains. They are unknown 
stories. They are wind that I can’t feel. They are
stars that don’t tell their secrets. 
I am their secret and they are mine. 

Hey, thanks for listening to Carrie Does Poems.

The music you hear is made available through the creative commons and it’s a bit of a shortened track from the fantastic Summer Spliff by Broke for Free.