Mental Health, Motherhood

This Old House

by Jess Kent-JohnsonLeave a Comment on This Old House
This Old House

Hips creak and moan like the wood floor
they clatter against. Pangeaic forms,
tectonic shifts, I roll from left to right.
Your precious breath tides in and out.
I bear witness to your being, each
achy joint erodes slowly over time.

Your house once, these hips were
A-frame, your growing flesh crocheted
within. The time came, they unfurled
petals to push you down into the air.
Pain, the siren song. Creation turns
insides outward. Messy stuff, life.

The pain tethers me to your breath.
I lie here to remember.

Uncategorized

Pandemic Family

by Jess Kent-JohnsonLeave a Comment on Pandemic Family
Pandemic Family 
Doors shuttered. Connections frayed--
we were downed power lines, sparks in wind.
The only way, together,
we built fires in the dark.

Or, we were sailors on a current
flowing to the world's end.
What monsters swam the deep
where our bow would tip and plummet?

Then, news came. New life.
Our hopes and fears commingled.
We turned our gaze within and
the unmapped world persisted.

We'd built the circle of the globe,
our bodies bridges, now to then.
Our endings were new worlds to know.
Motherhood, Poetry, REFLECTIONS

Chasing Sunbeams

by Jess Kent-JohnsonLeave a Comment on Chasing Sunbeams
Chasing Sunbeams 
The winter days darkened
from tilted hemisphere,
the snow squall hate that blusters
from the mouths of men.
Insidious clouds of thickened rage
block the sun with their backs
to deprive the warmth
that grows our crops.

In spite of this we sit indoors:
the dog, the baby, and I.
Neither know the dread
of Sunday scaries or headlines,
bad opinions, willful ignorance
of me and my and mine.

All they know is of the light
that hovers on adjacent wall, 
flits to the floor, doubles back,
the silent, playful wonder
of the sun’s reflected face
as it delights them with
elusive fairy hops.
Addiction, Poetry, REFLECTIONS

The Girl on Rural Ave

by Jess Kent-JohnsonLeave a Comment on The Girl on Rural Ave

I rented her the room
on the basis of her earrings.
Freckled nose, newly thin,
collar bones cut
sharp like her wit.
We gave thanks
with spanakopita
cranberries and turkey,
Tupperware bowls.
Her vintage eye,
a thrift store hound,
she let me wear
her green dress once.
I did again, without asking.
She knew but didn’t say.
Vodka smoothies, red-eyed research.
David Bowie, drunken curries.
The cheap skillet warped.
I laughed and ate her meal.
The decade took its toll.
A light dimmed by hidden liquor,
welfare calls, the ride to find the totaled car.
Missing persons report, the lonely cat,
a pile of sick upon the floor.
Awkward box step, care and boundary.
The line drawn.

A new sun rose, a corner turned.
A job, a love, a life abroad.
Santorini, Rome, and Paris,
Istanbul, a mother’s email.
No alcohol, they said.
No details yet.

Just a heart sans
beat.











identity, Mental Health, Motherhood, Poetry, REFLECTIONS

The Purse

by Jess Kent-JohnsonLeave a Comment on The Purse
The Purse 
I unpack the bag and pluck out my fears—

used tissues pinched by fingertips—

the truth of me smeared and hidden

lest anyone see I’m leaking.

Cringe and flinch at the caricature

my husband’s ex must make of me,

the time she caught me coveting her

well-lit composition and poise.

My finger tap, a signal
she was neither
out of sight nor out of mind.

My envy was lint in the side pocket

that, unballed, began as threads

from past betrayals and itchy scabs

I picked until they oozed.

In youth I feared deep loneliness,

the loss of power in a room of men,

a roving eye that paused for me but never

stopped.

Now the vows babies mortgages

bind me tight just as I wished.

In exchange, my solitude, a price I paid
with loose pennies from my purse.
identity, Poetry, REFLECTIONS

White Creek

by Jess Kent-JohnsonLeave a Comment on White Creek
White Creek 
I
The circle looped in on itself
no start and end but the
numbers on the houses,
crabgrass plots back to back
like brothers in a hotel bed.
We ran barefoot on the new tar road
run wince hobble walk
with gravel between our toes.
We roamed free, no collars no fences
like the transient dogs that wandered in.
Salt-brined babies in the Texas bake,
we hid and sought until the sun went down. 
II
Mailboxes welcomed us, red flags aloft
in soldierly rows saluted,
guards to hopeful letters.
We played postman to hand-scrawl
on white pages, blue lines.
Check yes or no and flattened cootie catchers
passed from hand to hand.
A dry breeze whipped the stripes and stars
atop the neighbor’s pole.
No purple mountains, no amber waves
Just us at the end of the road
before our parents called us home.
Mental Health, Motherhood, Pregnancy Loss

To Influential Mothers on Mother’s Day

by Jess Kent-JohnsonLeave a Comment on To Influential Mothers on Mother’s Day
To Influential Mothers on Mother’s Day

Here’s the thing about motherhood—it is the entrance into a perpetual, fluid experience that you can influence, but you cannot control.

It is a state of relationship to a child born, unborn, yearned for and not yet. It is a moment where you cease to be the primary protagonist of your story. Your storyline splits and there are two versions: the you that you knew before and the us. This is not to say that your needs or desires as a person cease to exist, but rather that your purpose becomes deeply intertwined with something other. Your locus of control shifts. Diverts. It’s no longer just about you.

Getting to motherhood is messy, regardless of how it happens. Whether it was an instance of failed birth control, or an exhausting marathon of hormone injections and timing, or a phone call on an afternoon that the paperwork is complete, the stars aligned, and you’ve been granted the chance to share a life with a child you haven’t met. None of us gets a guarantee.

I have been pregnant twice but have one child. Like so many, my path to motherhood didn’t progress in a linear fashion. My husband and I experienced a pregnancy loss the first time we conceived. It was devastating. There was nothing we could have done to change the outcome, and it was a too-personal example of the unpredictability of life.

I adore my son. He is light and exploration. He is curious and confident. His hunger is a guttural grumble that will not cease, and even when I’m cleaning bodily fluid off of his tiny body and mine, the exquisite intimacy of our duality is palpable.  I reflect often on the specialness of this force we set into motion that grows and learns of his own accord. I can influence, but I cannot control.

I watch him first observe, then practice, then emulate basic words. His shaky muscles propel a reach and a grasp until, after repetition and willpower, they push and pull his body into sturdiness. His brain makes connections between events that I did not weave together. The light switch and the lightbulb. The drop of the spoon and the clatter on the ground. The wiggling fingers lifted in salute, and the corresponding wave from the stranger on the sidewalk. No amount of organic food, scheduled sleep and wake windows, educational toys, or screen time limits can ensure who he will be. I can influence, but I cannot control.

His firsts are my firsts, too. I flex shaky muscles in ways they haven’t been used. I learn to navigate a new body, unfamiliar in both its form and its habits. Thinned hair, widened hips, a moon cycle unpredictable in its intensity. I toddle through the world in continual surprise that the assumptions I took for granted have changed. A yoga squat is easy. A full body plank is hard. I learn how to hold the squiggly line of a kid as I thread him through a sweater. I realize he has preferences as he smacks the spoon of chicken and lentils away from his mouth. I become proficient in a language I didn’t know—one where pitch and tone of a cry tells me the depth of pain or the shallow unease of over-tiredness.

On this Mother’s Day I lay in bed for ten greedy minutes and suppress the guilt that my husband is doing all of the morning child-rearing tasks. Because of the holiday I can get that guilt into a dense, flat circle about the size of a dime, but it never goes away. With the space left behind from that guilt vacuum, I instead write this:

If you, too, are in the slippery throes of uncertainty, the unease of newness, the frustration of circumstances you used to be able to hold tightly in your grasp, hello. I am here, too. Even if no one brings you French toast in bed, or your child is waiting on a diagnosis, or you are in the umpteenth round of IVF and can’t see the reward on the horizon, know that you are part of something larger than yourself. We are here, the other mothers swaying in the breezes of change, and we see you. Big hugs on this day, of all days. You are enough.