Poem a Day Challenge #7

Laurie’s prompt: a 10×20

I’m late to this one and I ended up feeling rushed. However, I think there’s something here that I will want to revisit when I can from this into something else.

Somewhere along the road I stopped using
first person singular. I became we.

We got married, we got pregnant, we bought
a house. That made sense – we were now a team.

But then it became “we planned for this” or
“we planned for that” but I did all the work.

I felt some need to relinquish my role,
my individual effort dissolved.

Our garden – my garden. Our plants – my plants.
I wrote myself out, gave away my job.

No one asked me to do this, I don’t know
why this happened. I just felt strangely safe.

I’ve been practicing saying I out loud,
to the mirror, the cats, the dog, myself.

It feels like walking naked through the streets;
eyes on me, judging my audacity.

It feels much safer when I am a We
or that people will take me more seriously.

On my own I fear being overlooked.
But as together I’m invisible.