Is It Oversharing?

Is it oversharing

to say

I’m having a hard time?

I don’t know the woman in the mirror

Were her eyes always so close together?

When did she gain those lines around her mouth?

She is so tired, the baby’s doctor always tells her so

When she’s trying to look her best

Heartbroken is what she is

I hear the rattling in her chest

The wound still open from birth

And secret dread each morning

A wish that she had prepared

To be a mom with her attention everywhere

But on raising her daughter

She logs on to the job and swallows a panic attack

Before the first sip of coffee

This mothering would be easy, she thinks,

If it’s all I had to do.

But it’s not all she has to do

She’s busy keeping half the roof over the head

And losing her mind

Her dreams sinking deeper away

Like they’re out of time

Just spare poems on the notes in her phone

An hour at the gym she tries not to spend crying

A desperate urge to burn this down

She wants to say I’m not perfect

To say I feel alone

To express the embarrassment

that I struggled with the birth

Didn’t handle the pain with more grace

And now everything is a mess down there.

She is overwhelmed.

Not coping well with the pressure

Torn between being here and away

struggling everyday

Smiling straight through tears

Holding them back hoping the baby doesn’t see

What is happening inside of me,

She says to herself

wants to know if it’s okay

to desire a shed light on the struggle

When her boyfriend wants to know

When she will start making dinner again.

How to say she’s depressed

Without suffocating anybody.

Would it seem ungrateful to mention

Since giving birth to our child

Most days I would give anything for a kind word

Or a back rub or a little time to myself.

My heart is broken and I am scared

That sharing anything is over sharing

and so I bite my tongue well