Eclipsed, again, again
This is a previously posted poem about Premenstrual Dysphoric Disorder. Since I'm currently in this state right now and our power has been out for hours, a repost feels right.
My husband enters our blind-drawn room and leans down to whisper: The eclipse is happening if you want to watch but if you want to keep sleeping, you should. He knows I was awake while everyone slept the night moving over my face as I wept. I tell him I want to sleep instead. I’ll catch the next one. But sleep doesn’t return and I watch our dim bedroom grow slightly dimmer and picture my children lined up outside watching the blackout descend: six ducklings standing in a row six sunflowers turning towards the burned-out sun six kids from the fifties, wearing 3-D glasses while watching a monster movie. My own monster crouches low in the corner of our dim, now dimmer bedroom flicking its claws through the calendar already planning my next darkness.
Stunning poem that touches me in my own experience with an invisible disability. The disappointment, the missing out. The monster flicking through the calendar pages.
The dark hours that become dark days. The dark that becomes pitch black and swallows them all.
I feel you, Margaret.