Lying
The summer I was sixteen
I learned that I lie.
I spent a week
on Cape Cod, with people
I didn’t like; children whose company I didn’t enjoy,
their parents, cold people
with nothing to say to me at sixteen.
Afraid of the emptiness of summer, I said
I’d be glad to go.
And they believed me.
The summer I was sixteen
I learned that I lie
to make my fears invisible.
Twice that week I lied.
The first time – two lies, really –
at the top of the four steps to cabin #3, I said yes,
I could handle the casserole and the stroller
full of sleeping child, knowing
it was not true, and again,
over the wails of the child with pine duff in his mouth
to the demand “what happened?”
I invented a child running past,
bumping the stroller, distracting me
“I could have handled it, but….”
The summer I was sixteen
I learned I lie
to make my fears invisible
and that it works.
The second time – a day later – our only day on the ocean side,
free from children, I threaded through the beach crowds
to swim the waves.
I knew waves
from the week’s adventures on the bay side,
from growing up in Lake Michigan.
I breasted in, confident,
but I knew nothing of the ocean’s heave.
In a moment I was upended,
thrown to the bottom and dragged up again,
rolled and pounded by the merciless waves.
Something had mercy,
or perhaps the tide was just coming in.
I was tossed towards the beach,
found my feet, heaved upright,
groped my way back
to the blazing white sand and empty crowds,
gasping.
Sure my fear showed in every inch of my skin,
in my eyes, in my wild hair,
I was afraid of what I would say
to anxious questions.
“I’m fine” came to mind,
asserted over the litany of my pounding heart.
But no one asked.
And I said nothing,
asked for nothing,
got nothing –
no lecture
no comforting hug
no place for tears and shaking
no report to my parents
no cup of hot tea before bed.
Nothing but the knowledge
that my fears are invisible.
The summer I was sixteen
I learned that I lie
to make my fears invisible
and that it works
and that it fails.
Lies do not disappear.
They stay whole and real, alive,
polished with each passing year
as the silence grows deeper.
Tasha Harmon
August 31 through October 29, 2003, with September 2021 edits
Caught Sleeping
1.
Something changed the day I caught you sleeping.
The robin red breasts are feeding in the trees outside my window,
fluffed big against the cold and damp, and I see
the sharp-eyed robin of my old picture book,
pulling the worm from the ground to feed her babies, and
the edge of the meadow in Prospect Park
where you learned the birds and showed them to me.
Maybe it happened when I knocked and you did not come to the door—
we’d made a date for 2:30 and I was right on time. Or maybe
when I used my key and called out my usual “Hi Mom”
and you did not answer.
There are no bright red cardinals in these rainy winter woods.
You transplanted one here on your navy sweatshirt, and
called me once from New Jersey, to celebrate a sighting.
Or maybe it happened as I searched the little house, voices
worrying in my head—Did I get the time wrong? She never forgets
a commitment—the unnamed fears looming behind.
It’s raining again. A few robins huddle in the trees.
Do they wish for the shelter of the leaves, still furled
in the dark branches? They drink the water droplets
collecting on their swaying perches, harvesting
what is given them.
Or maybe it happened when I entered the bedroom and found you,
asleep, blankets pulled up over your shoulders, breathing quietly.
The rain is letting up. A rise of starlings lifts,
settles low in the trees, pauses, then returns
to the grass. The stellar jay announces its displeasure.
Or when I called again, softly this time, and still you did not respond.
When I could not bring myself to touch your shoulder, wake you
from your sleep. When I went back down the stairs
wincing at each creak, closed and locked the door behind me.
There is a broken branch in one of the beeches,
still attached, but no longer living. I wonder
if it happened in last week’s storm, or if I just
hadn’t noticed it until now.
Or maybe, it happened when the window in the guest room opened and you called “Ta,”
and I turned on the sidewalk; when you came down the front steps,
face still rumpled from sleep, to greet me and I,
confused, said “I called, but you were asleep and I didn’t want to wake you,”
and you said “I wasn’t asleep.I was just upstairs and must not have heard you.”
When my stomach filled with winter rain,
the voice in my head shouting “but I saw you”
my throat and mouth silent
as you drew me back inside.
2.
Why would you lie to me?
And what else do you lie about?
I don’t want to be protected—
or maybe I do—but I don’t want
to have to guess about whether
you are telling me the truth
as you get old and I have
to figure out
how to take care of you.
Did you feel this way when I was
two and started hiding how I felt—
or did you feel relieved that I was
growing up and learning
to control my responses?
3.
I don’t want to see
how we circle around each other
trying to protect ourselves
from the reflection of our own truths
in each others’ faces.
Tasha Harmon
January 25, 2010 with September 23, 2021 edits