January 25th: Considering How Some of It Happened
--One day it happens: what you feared all your life,
the undenduringly specific, the exact thing. No matter what you say or do.
Marie Howe How Some of it Happened
How did the phrase she’s in trouble come to mean
she’s going to have a baby and she’s in a bad way
not being married, how on earth? Look:
Old French: trubler, to trouble,
disturb; make cloudy, stir
up, mix; agitation of the mind,
emotional turmoil
was it a man or a woman all those years ago on
his or her knees at the end of the confessional
row who said I’m in trouble now or you’re in
trouble now and under what authority what
consented or stolen they’ll twist to provoked
either way and the shame the shame is all hers
to carry all her life in her arms like a baby too
and will be dying she’ll take it to her ashes the way
she tensed when he touched her if you don’t
I’ll kill your baby brother if you don’t I’ll…and so
she does again and again and again and again when-
ever he wanted and before the baby and eclampsia
and living and right after the baby she didn’t want to
but he found other holes he found he turned her
over she screamed she knew it would be like this
she always knew her mother said if you fool around
with him if you lead him on you’ll get in trouble
and she did admitting it was the fucking her every-
where that broke her it wasn’t the two daughters later
that broke her it was she was in trouble the first time
he touched her and he zinged so big she flinched
and he liked it she moved away ran away and he liked
it he was charged he was lightning and she was
always always ground when they met.
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