Shannon Frost Greenstein
My Body Is a Coffin for Dead Children, and Other Things: For Kelly
We stand outside in the sun;
vapor, smoke.
A break in a day of the churning capitalist machine.
Acquaintances, burgeoning friends, shared burden and symbiotic empathy.
Wednesday.
I do not recall how I know
when in the dialogue insight struck.
When I learned I can not
in fact
empathize
With loss that is foreign to me.
Mothers.
Givers.
Protectors.
Shouldering the yoke of the burden of life
and death.
I.
I am lucky. Lucky twice.
She is unlucky. Eleven times.
To bear a child is an awesome thing.
Not awesome but awe-some,
something which inspires awe;
to grow a child
has nothing to do with glowing.
Omnipresent fear;
certainty in pessimism.
The pressure of sustaining
a stranger whose life
matters more than your own.
Death lingers, unseen, with every twinge and ache.
A promise of loss and grief camouflaged
by love, and growth, and society’s demand
that blessings rain on the mother.
I.
I am lucky. Lucky twice.
She is unlucky. Eleven times.
I try to think.
Sympathize, not empathize.
impossible to do
impossible to imagine
impossible to endure.
I do not understand, can not understand.
We smoke, the sun shines,
the phenomenological lived experience of a Wednesday.
Light. Bubbles. Strength.
Not awesome, but awe-some
something which inspires awe.
I feel like my body is a coffin for dead children.
Eureka. Insight. Understanding. Empathy.
A flash of emotion
that I, the poet, did not divine
this beautiful
haunting
visceral
sentence born from mourning, grown from decades of hurt, watered by tears.
A seed
falls from the sentence;
takes root.
Poems emerge and friendships evolve and I am struck
suddenly
by how quickly it can all
go wrong
and
how life isn’t fair.
I.
I am lucky. Lucky twice.
She is unlucky. Eleven times.
For Kelly, whose body is so many other things.
For Kelly, who is stronger than anyone knows.
For Kelly, who bears this Sisyphean cargo
through the capitalist machinations
of the day to day.
For Kelly, whose body tells a story.
For Kelly, whose story is awesome.
Not awesome but awe-some,
something which inspires awe.
My body is a coffin for dead children
And suddenly
I get it
I can never get it
and her grief
for a moment
becomes my own.
Down to the filter
and I return
to the machine
with gratitude
that I have been granted the privilege
to lean in
to sit with
to share
to be sad together
because it’s better than being sad alone.
For Kelly. Who is awesome.
Awesome and awe-some,
something which inspires awe.
vapor, smoke.
A break in a day of the churning capitalist machine.
Acquaintances, burgeoning friends, shared burden and symbiotic empathy.
Wednesday.
I do not recall how I know
when in the dialogue insight struck.
When I learned I can not
in fact
empathize
With loss that is foreign to me.
Mothers.
Givers.
Protectors.
Shouldering the yoke of the burden of life
and death.
I.
I am lucky. Lucky twice.
She is unlucky. Eleven times.
To bear a child is an awesome thing.
Not awesome but awe-some,
something which inspires awe;
to grow a child
has nothing to do with glowing.
Omnipresent fear;
certainty in pessimism.
The pressure of sustaining
a stranger whose life
matters more than your own.
Death lingers, unseen, with every twinge and ache.
A promise of loss and grief camouflaged
by love, and growth, and society’s demand
that blessings rain on the mother.
I.
I am lucky. Lucky twice.
She is unlucky. Eleven times.
I try to think.
Sympathize, not empathize.
impossible to do
impossible to imagine
impossible to endure.
I do not understand, can not understand.
We smoke, the sun shines,
the phenomenological lived experience of a Wednesday.
Light. Bubbles. Strength.
Not awesome, but awe-some
something which inspires awe.
I feel like my body is a coffin for dead children.
Eureka. Insight. Understanding. Empathy.
A flash of emotion
that I, the poet, did not divine
this beautiful
haunting
visceral
sentence born from mourning, grown from decades of hurt, watered by tears.
A seed
falls from the sentence;
takes root.
Poems emerge and friendships evolve and I am struck
suddenly
by how quickly it can all
go wrong
and
how life isn’t fair.
I.
I am lucky. Lucky twice.
She is unlucky. Eleven times.
For Kelly, whose body is so many other things.
For Kelly, who is stronger than anyone knows.
For Kelly, who bears this Sisyphean cargo
through the capitalist machinations
of the day to day.
For Kelly, whose body tells a story.
For Kelly, whose story is awesome.
Not awesome but awe-some,
something which inspires awe.
My body is a coffin for dead children
And suddenly
I get it
I can never get it
and her grief
for a moment
becomes my own.
Down to the filter
and I return
to the machine
with gratitude
that I have been granted the privilege
to lean in
to sit with
to share
to be sad together
because it’s better than being sad alone.
For Kelly. Who is awesome.
Awesome and awe-some,
something which inspires awe.
Biography
Shannon Frost Greenstein resides in Philadelphia with her children, soulmate, and persnickety cats. She is a former Ph.D. candidate in Continental Nietzschean Philosophy, a two-time 2019 Best of the Net Nominee, and a 2018 Pushcart Prize Nominee. Shannon was also awarded a writing residency through Sundress Academy for the Arts in October 2019. Her work has appeared in McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, Crab Fat Magazine, Chaleur Magazine, Bone & Ink Lit Zine, the Philadelphia City Paper, and elsewhere. Follow her on Twitter at @mrsgreenstein or her website: shannonfrostgreenstein.wordpress.com. She comes up when you Google her.
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