Heavy

Dressed in cotton-white, dolled up
like I’m a little girl playing at
real life, only this time my Mother
won’t laugh at my tablecloth gown
and tell me, “Someday, someday.”

This day is my Someday, and
God himself can’t keep me from
bending and buckling under the
countless eyes upon my frame,
threatening to drag me down.

Only his steely eyes sustain me.
They pull me up and in; only the
cold comfort there gives me the
strength to whisper the two words
everyone stretches an ear to hear.

I test my new name, roll it around
and try to fit it to my lips, but
it’s heavy; weighing on my tongue,
sticking in my throat, much like
swallowing spoonfuls of honey.

I feel it in my shoulders, too. Not him;
how he holds it up, always standing
rigid as the rails laid in his name,
suffused with a sense of purpose—
there’s no weariness in his bones.

But he’s had years of practice and
I only a few moments of bearing it.
I’ll learn how to shift it, ease the
pressure, so that I too might carry it
like a beacon, glowing with pride.

Added to my own it’s like another
passenger trying to find a seat on an
already crowded train. Everything is
bound to settle after the initial shuffle,
new finding its way among the old.