fall poem

September was hard for me, I can't pretend otherwise. To pass the date we lost the baby last year, to see the flowers glow along our fence, and the blue sky and crisp air, all so similar to that terrible post-loss time. I wrote a few things, these past few weeks. This poem(written yesterday, in class) seems to best summarize my process, the quixotic joy and remembering:

Honeycrisp

Apples crisp the year
turning again, and though I will grow tired
of this fruit, today I love it, mottled skin, sweet flesh,
even the little marks. How can this day
relate to last years same date?

Tragedy marked that calendar and I shake myself
cat-like as if from rain
the rain that would not fall all through
the first fortnight of grieving.
I shake myself then hold tight.
If I could hold my breath for 24 hours
I would. If I could have held that baby in
I would have. Now, this next life jostles my ribs
and marks my breathing. I grow round

as an apple in this apple time. I try to will myself whole.
Mottled skin, sun marked, wind. I am a great
protector. I stand still, I move slowly. I turn the calendar
page, finally, to the next month. The one unmarked
by that other, first life. But is anything unblemished/unremembered?

Will next years’ apples find me loving
this time of year again? My teeth almost
meet at the edge of the apple’s core. Cool air
flushes my cheek. I am in my body, I am not the only one.
Bite to the center, there is always another layer, morsel.
I swallow and the baby turns. Receives. I am not just me,
though only two hands touch this paper, and a little juice,
clear, sweet. Undeniably now. Fleeting, but marking.