Like a Small Child

Containment
A.E. Stallings

So long I have been carrying myself
Carefully, carefully, like a small child
With too much water in a real glass
Clasped in two hands, across a space as vast
As living rooms, while gazes watch the waves
That start to rile the little inland sea
And slap against its cliffs' transparency,
Revise and meet, double their amplitude,
Harmonizing doubt from many ifs.
Distant frowns like clouds begin to brood.
Soon there is overbrimming. Soon the child
Looks up to find a face to match the scolding,
And just as he does, the vessel he was holding
Is almost set down safely on the bookshelf.

I sometimes feel as though I am going through the motions of my life, doing just enough to convince both those who know what's going on and those who don't that I have a handle on everything. That I may be devastated, but I am not debilitated. That I am going to get through this.

Except, of course, for those moments when I can't hold it together, and I collapse weeping, or need to break something, or lash out, or just scream. And it's cathartic, but at the same time, a small part of me is judging myself, scolding myself for not doing a better a job (whatever that means).

I've felt the vastness of living rooms, the growing unease as mental waves "harmoniz[e] doubt from many ifs," the (wonderfully-understated) "overbrimming."

Maybe it's because I am a parent to a toddler, but there is something about this poem, about identifying with the small child, that makes me want to stop looking for the scolding and instead hold myself, comfort myself, and forgive myself for when I just can't contain it all anymore.