a different kind of tired

3612 Dayton Street.  A town nobody could pronounce in a state known for it’s peaches and boiled peanuts and confederate die-hards.  30815.  I lived in a house that backed up to a pine forest–trees bigger than I dared to dream. The three babies under my feet left me worn and weary with their squeaky but mommy and how come? and but I’m not tired yet. I was a young Army wife, so many crooked lines from home that I probably couldn’t have found my way if I’d tried.  All alone in a place where the drawl of my neighbors sometimes pricked like an insult and something as light and airy as hope hung like an anvil around my neck.  I was tired.  So, so tired.

And then the years passed and the babies grew and the squeak in their voices gave way to eyes that rolled and doors that slammed before I could raise my hand to knock.

and I tell you the truth when I say that last week we bought my baby a car all her own.

There is a different kind of tired, here.  In this place.  One that sneaks in under the cover of time and steals away with dreams I’ve yet to dream because the canvas of sleep won’t come.  One that piles like a quarry in my stomach and fills up the space so much so that even hunger pangs go unnoticed.  Hungry and tired.  Lost and heartbroken.  And empty.  And maybe just hollow, it’s hard to say.

Tired that seeps into my pores and melts inside of me and turns to liquid and spills out my tear ducts until they dry up.  Tired that berates  and scolds and points a blaming finger.  Tired that threatens never to leave.  Never to relent.

In a part of me that doesn’t want to admit it, I maybe once have wondered how differently my life’s minutes might pass if never a child passed through me.  If never a life came from mine.

but because I’m nothing at all if not her mother and her mother and her mother and his I know I would grieve the loss of every single exhausted moment.  Each missed sigh.  And maybe only then would I really really know hollow.

There aren’t any trees out the back windows anymore.  Just dust and desert.

Nowhere to go but up, up.

And away.