Strep throat, when you swallow, but that’s more of a
crash than a scrape. Or a crash then a scrape.
“There’s a wall in my throat! Pull back! Pull back!”
but whatever I just took in through my mouth says
“I’m going! Maybe it won’t be so bad this time”
but it is. It is bad every time.
Akin to nails on a chalkboard but not quite that
(and there are whole generations now for whom
that phrase means absolutely nothing),
infelicitous phrasing can sometimes turn my neck
to the side a certain way and those tiny, adorable
bones inside my ear scrape and because they are
right there inside my ear it sounds like bricks.
And when my son was still in diapers there were times
when I was changing him and he was being wiggly
or crying or otherwise developmentally appropriate
that I knew the resentment I felt could be overcome
with love but I resisted feeling that love, I fought
to hold onto the pain. There was a tie between
love beyond measure and something beyond annoyance
and they scraped at each other. Hard.
______
We used cloth diapers. Over and over and over again.
marniere 