Unboxed

by Barbara Cassidy

Repetition masquerading as tradition without meaning. Compulsion latched to a fear of not belonging. You groomed me for some past life of chastity and penances, to appease and comfort, to have my lasagna measure up to my mother in-law’s. These festas, foods. A stigmata, see? I too bleed as I peel blanched tomatoes, cut by the constant use of the ravioli wheel. I belong. See me in the competitive pregnancies and holy day attendances. Funerals. There in black, silent, holding a food basket in my free hand, a child at the other, a child at my skirt. You sang it like a love song, what was to be what was to come, one that did not match my feelings of despair, culpable yet unable to free myself from my designated box. Transgressions are not sins, they are an endless horizon of freedoms wrapped in hot joy offerings, new belongings, unboxing me from your kitchen of useless ghosts crying out for yet another serving.

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Barbara Cassidy

Barbara Cassidy is a poet, singer-songwriter, and Sean-nós singer who resides in Massachusetts. Her poems have appeared in Open Doors Review, Poetry Breakfast, on the 2023/2025 Martin Poetry Path in Newton, The Journal of Undiscovered Poets, Poetry Super Highway, WILDsound Poetry Festival and set to music by composer Eric Chasalow.