Crabapple Elegy
They say you should hold
your breath when passing the cemetery,
but I do not fear the reach
of the dead.
When she died—Christmas morning,
an unforecasted veil of snow--
our chests were undone.
I learned the sounds a body makes
as it unhooks itself.
Each begins with breath.
Hers sounded like a metal cage
being stripped for parts, rib by rib.
Maybe the lungs are another Pandora’s box.
When she died, all forms of breath fell out.
The breath of Silent Night
sung over her body.
The hollow breath of those who said
it happened so fast, even though it didn’t.
Only anger held itself--
until the following spring,
when the snow cleared and the earth no longer
dressed herself in black with us.
Anger waited for the first spring pruning,
for the weight of the chainsaw
in my father’s hand.
Waited for the tender bark
of our favorite crabapple tree.
Waited for white flowers
and full bloom.
Anger waited for contrast.
When the flowers stopped shaking,
the proportion of grief
had finally found scale--
a bitter light in the kitchen
where branches once stretched,
white shreds of flowers across the yard,
my father slumped and
heaving next to the fallen tree.
your breath when passing the cemetery,
but I do not fear the reach
of the dead.
When she died—Christmas morning,
an unforecasted veil of snow--
our chests were undone.
I learned the sounds a body makes
as it unhooks itself.
Each begins with breath.
Hers sounded like a metal cage
being stripped for parts, rib by rib.
Maybe the lungs are another Pandora’s box.
When she died, all forms of breath fell out.
The breath of Silent Night
sung over her body.
The hollow breath of those who said
it happened so fast, even though it didn’t.
Only anger held itself--
until the following spring,
when the snow cleared and the earth no longer
dressed herself in black with us.
Anger waited for the first spring pruning,
for the weight of the chainsaw
in my father’s hand.
Waited for the tender bark
of our favorite crabapple tree.
Waited for white flowers
and full bloom.
Anger waited for contrast.
When the flowers stopped shaking,
the proportion of grief
had finally found scale--
a bitter light in the kitchen
where branches once stretched,
white shreds of flowers across the yard,
my father slumped and
heaving next to the fallen tree.
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Emily StoddardEmily Stoddard's writing has appeared in Tinderbox Poetry Journal, Rust+Moth, New Poetry from the Midwest, Menacing Hedge, Hermeneutic Chaos, Gravel, and elsewhere. She is an affiliate of the Amherst Writers & Artists Method and leads writing workshops online and in Michigan.
W // Emily Stoddard |