And For Tonight

i take my heels off before my key turns the lock
easing the door open to ensure a quiet entry
into a house shrouded in slumber.

tonight, i was the part of me
that knew life before diaper changes
didn't carry a pair of spiderman undies stashed in her purse, "just in case"
whose stomach didn't bear the stripes of growth verses skin.

i pinned my hair up
put my makeup on
and quite literally danced out the door.

i laughed. too loud.
i talked. too much.
i felt the pressing of responsibility upon my shoulders
lift under the shoring of friendship.

yet now, in the dark, i re-enter.
without a light on or a face seen
i am aware of the presence of the lives i hold most dear.

i feel the electric current
of my life being pulled to theirs
of belonging, together.

i push back hair cascading over
dream dampened foreheads,
replace covers kicked off
by growing limbs.

and take the hairpins out, one by one
while the house pops, creaks, expands
to contain the weight of our love.

i peel off the layers of clothes
that smell of the stale and fleeting life outside
letting them pool around my feet as
i, emerge.

i am
both the girl inside and the woman i will become.

i belong
to grandeur and to servitude.

i speak
in wild laughter and whispered fairy-tales.

i expand
to contain the world and lives entrusted to me.

my current self
slides between the well worn cotton sheets
nubbed with the nights spent. secure.
and pull the covers of contentment around me.

i rest my head
ears lulled by the sound of life's forward momentum just outside my window.

my breathing slows
as my sleeping rhythm finds theirs.

and for tonight,
i am enough.


{linked with Jen, Just Write, dversepoets, Imperfect Prose}