There Won't Be A Camelot
I have something not on your list
I was going to bring to you...in March
Is that ok?
It's a book collection...
Is this the same book collection
you were putting together
for Camelot?
Yes. I am giving it to Ollie.
There won't be a Camelot.
I wasn't prepared for the vinegar in my mouth
The taste of mourning rising in my throat as
I lovingly wrapped in tissues while
packing the curated pages of children's stories
fables, fantasies, dreams, entreaties
that instilled in me the principles
I wished to instill in you
to make you in to a human that would
a better world
and help you make
a better world
It was unexpected--this sudden, deep slice of sorrow
It was not the first time a favored friend
who, with me as children--
two young girls, giggling over dolls under
the plastic skirts of a dining table
two girls cuddled in a twin bed
had planned our futures
to raise our children together in a cul-de-sac
with Sunday potlocks in our kitchens
in our perfect lives with our perfect loves
It was not the first time the dream had been unfulfilled
even forsworn
I had given up that dream in my twenties
spoken its truth multiple times--
that I would never have children.
Too many risks
father in my bones
cancer in my blood
anger in my belly
monsters in my soul
things I resolved never to pass on
tragedies I stomped out within my womb
futures I savagely discarded
better to never bring a warrior into this world
than to risk bringing an annihilator
I know it takes ten, twenty, thirty people
to put back together what one man can shred apart
with molten metal from a gun
I know how words said to a child
can leave wounds they never heal from as adults
My best friend (to whose child
I am bestowing this cache of virtues) says:
I feel...as if you had a miscarriage...
It's like sorrow for what could have been
in another lifetime
And I think to myself:
You were more than a child to me
Camelot was an idea
you were a dream
of what we could achieve
the idea imbued into a round table
honor honesty valor loyalty
to the species not just to ourselves
you were courage and justice
mercy and generosity
faith and nobility and
Hope
and it is not the letting go of that dream
that shakes me to my core
it is the realization that the indifference
with which I offered up these gifts
reveals something in me:
that I, without awareness,
incrementally, by a matter of
degrees so slight, buffeted by tragedies
had changed fundamentally
until one day I looked back
at something I thought was so ingrained
in the fibers of my being
and found that I
unbeknownst to myself
have surrendered
and accepted
there won't be a Camelot
