Morning in December: Two Months Since You’ve Left | DEIRDRE KOENEN

Morning in December: Two Months Since You’ve Left

DEIRDRE KOENEN | VERMONT I named you for the goddess of the moon, the light whose white hung as a lantern for my nine months trapped in my own heavying body as you grew, overtaking my womb, my strength and then my heart when you surfaced bloody bawling to the world; you shrieked and sung your way through seasons untethered by fear, shame or love in the spring of life. You raced barefoot, blue-eyed, crowned in the flowers of youth, strewing lilies behind me until you fell behind, distracted from my path to other calls, and a chasm cut the cord between us, laid you bare to the stares and words of red-lipped glares and snickers, drove you to the arms of a dark stranger who took you, forced a warped vision of love deep into your soul, hungry for acceptance, comfort, ease that your mother couldn’t give you. Because I saw a strayed rebel where a frightened daughter hid and carried the parasitic load of a man’s lust in silence, feeling it grow like fear until its weight pushed you on a morning in your seventeenth fall to tie a noose, encircle your throat, step off the ledge and swing your soul to the underworld, making me a Demeter in a new kind of winter, grey-haired and sleepless at my empty table, fingering pomegranate seeds and hushing the urge to follow.