Myers-Briggs
I took a personality test that claimed I was a passionate idealist, so I printed
off the results and flossed my teeth with them because I refuse to be
compartmentalized into eight different traits like deli meat tubs at a
sandwich shop, and who am I to deny what a computer has known
for seconds versus what I’ve known for a lifetime, most people don’t know
that Myers and Briggs were mother and daughter: Myers, a mystery
writer, typed as a purebred mediator, her mother, a teacher, unsurprisingly,
a devout advocate, mothers are often teachers, and vice versa, molding children
on baking sheets, perfecting the right ratio of tendencies and attitudes, they say
the baker is only as good as their baking, it’s no wonder that the two women
were only one trait apart, Briggs infusing aspects of herself, the daughter
prodded and smoothed, contained in her proving drawer, and I, at the
counter, pushing a rolling pin in my daughter’s hands, straining under the
burden of nurture, the recipe all mothers must carry, but never pass on.
* * * * *
Minivan Mafia
The minivan mafia is surrounding my house, their practical colored
vehicles forming an armored fleet, automatic doors slowly sliding
backwards to reveal the hungry drivers, diaper bag arsenals, grenade
in hand, gun in the other, knife strapped to their sensibly-clad thigh,
Old Navy stretchable waistband skin tight jeans, and I am tired of
scouting the perimeter, hunched by the windows, peering through
binoculars in search of their imposing ranks flanking down my
street, and when they run towards my home, it is a guttural sound
deep within their bellies that rises up and tumbles from their mouths,
the wet gurgling of dreams torn out by the root, and as they strike
me down, there is a chant beneath the rhythm of batons thwacking,
submit your intuition to our impossible standards, our spies who’ve
seen your misgivings in parenthood, who’ve condemned you as other if
you are not one of our impractically maintained unattainable horde.
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