Winter, two poems
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and it is like this every year
when the axis of earth dares change its mind,
and when the memories of past winters
turn to crystals in the air
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stone pillows
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sometimes I pull out
my old map of the world
it’s foreign now, but recognizable
the familiar landscapes are still there
I just can’t visit them anymore
Threads of sorrow, threads of hope
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And so I folded back the meticulously knitted arms – barely bigger than my thumb – and tucked under the hood with the twin minute functional drawstrings. And I gingerly placed that little woolen packet of broken-hearted yearning in a barren drawer in our vacant nursery, praying I’d have reason, someday, to take it out again.
Read MoreArriving
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The previous owners lost a child. The woman who lived here is a social worker and specializes in infant and child loss, which we only found out after we signed the sale contract and googled her name. I wonder if they lost a child, my husband and I said to each other then, and our suspicions were confirmed by the handyman who stopped by to remove a memorial stone from the back meadow. Eerie, that connection. The space readied for our exact sorrow.
Read MoreThe solitary in solidarity
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In my conscious attempt to steer clear of catastrophe, I had been focusing too much on the “how,” when it all comes down to “what” and the absence of “why.” That it is always a life too short, a death too soon, and the meaninglessness in between. So I visited Ground Zero last fall and this summer. For the first time in the four years of living barely an hour from it. I stood there in silence, daring to open up to the lives I knew were ripped apart that day. I allowed myself to believe that I knew every single parent, sibling, spouse and child who forever lost a part of their heart that day. I need not imagine. I knew.
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