My Very Last Miscarriage Poem
Wants to remind you that when you
get to the innermost matryoshka,
it’s a baby. This last poem of poems
is its own kind of loss as the last
of anything. I could cry for my last
miscarriage poem, which wants
to remind you that I have grown
comfortable with the quiet of my
single and singular child who sometimes
has needs as hungry as a baby’s.
This last and most specific loss
poem says he needs every ounce
of my attention anyway because
he is in love with the prettiest girl
in sixth grade, and I know what it means
to nurse the unrequited. The last miscarriage
poem tells you that I have aged
into a feeling akin to acceptance,
that if others have what I always
wanted, the flame of my rage sputters,
nearly out of fuel. The endnote, this
losing of loss, says don’t worry;
I’m good now. I keep gratitude
on speed dial; I'm in touch with
every hollow I harbor. This final missive
makes of itself a raft of bark, and I
take the layette gifted for good luck
and fecundity—patterned in spring
green and smattered with dragonflies—
and I set it into the center of the raft.
I strike a match and catch at the ribbons
twisting in the wind, then I push
the effigy into the center of a lake
where we can both watch it burn
without hiding our eyes.
Sonia Greenfield is the author of two full-length collections of poetry. Letdown, released in March, was selected for the 2020 Marie Alexander Series and published by White Pine Press. Her collection, Boy With a Halo at the Farmer's Market, won the 2014 Codhill Poetry Prize and was published in 2015. Her chapbook, American Parable, won the 2017 Autumn House Press chapbook prize. Her work has appeared in a variety of places, including in the 2018 and 2010 Best American Poetry. She lives with her husband, son, and Shiloh Shepherd in Minneapolis where she teaches at Normandale College and edits the Rise Up Review. More at soniagreenfield.com