I’m surprised to see you; after the lifetimes this stretched-out skin —this hive-of-busysadangry-bees mind —these over-firing neurons —these pulled-too-tight and SNAP! strands DNA have seen.
Thirty-two. In eight more years, I will be exactly twice the age as my eldest daughter —or, “her daughter is half her age;” she’s “too young to look that old;” “a baby with a baby;” …infantilized constantly.
Told I’m too young to feel this tired. But newborn children must sleep for seventeen hours and maybe it’s because the world is too little and too much, all at once such a wondrous blur but I saw a colour in nature I’d never seen before and it made me hyperventilate and there’s a train building up speed five miles away and sometimes I think about laying on the tracks, just to see just to see and a jet-engine is roaring and I think how often does an airplane crash into bedrooms at night and is it always a moment of sad, desperately sobbed prayers answered or does everybody feel the world moving in their veins?
Thirty-two, who even are you?
A ghost A child A mother A sister A sister A sister- in-arms.
Thirty-two; I’m surprised to see you.
But I wouldn’t run towards you, hopeful, if I didn’t believe every year of you has been worth it, and the next eight, or thirty-two, or (if I’m lucky) sixty, will be as beautiful as Just This:
Thirty-two, I see you.
Taken at Carden’s Cove in Marathon, Ontario on the coast of Lake Superior on the poet’s birthday, July 17, 2022.
There is a toxicity that seeps into my spirit– something already broken by you– a thief in the night that robs me of sleep until my nightguard reminds me:
you should not invade my dreams as you do my daily thoughts.
And yet, during the day, I analyze old messages, carve a path through past conversations to see if I can find where those toxic toadstools released their spores and told me:
“you deserved all this cruelty” “you will never be enough”
These words are wolf-snarl in the back of my mind.
This is how I always envisioned you when we were children– but you were never a child, always more beast– a rabid wolf with teeth bared, saliva dripping as you spat in my face.
There is no soothe for this kind of burn and still I seek repair;
I dump buckets of water on a burning house that strangely resembles our childhood home: where the wolf lured Red Riding Hood and told her she was always alone
but fairy tales were never real there
if they were, maybe I would stop trying to find your most redeeming qualities.
And here is the irony: if you were anybody else, I wouldn’t keep following those toadstools to the wolf’s house;
but we were borne of the same womb, so even with your teeth bared, don’t I owe you my survival and my life?
Didn’t Little Red always owe the wolf everything for leading her home?
Orange shirts stand guard at the gates: sentries on either side protecting the children lost to residential school travesty; the sun-bright orange shines like a miracle, rooted amidst tragedy.
A sacred fire burns with tobacco offerings — peace mixes with the perfume of petrichor; Summer Solstice is here, but following a sticky-sweet heat wave, the clouds grieve and the wind rages
for the unmarked graves of children.
(but is this mine to grieve?)
Elsewhere, I imagine drums beckon thunder with the rain, and ribbon skirts and jingle dresses flash like lightning; nature grieves in sync with First Nations peoples — and of course: this is their land first.
Their cries bring a miraculous movement across a country; a so-called sovereign land built on the bones of babies whose culture and language was beaten and raped from their bodies.
(but is this mine to grieve?)
This is the tragedy: that it took too-many years for children’s souls to escape their dirt-prisons; the miracle is in the sun-bright orange shirts, the powerful grief of nature: that raging wind which calls the children home again.
And the sky opens: the lightning flashes, the thunder crashes; every sound above is a child crying — a parent, sister, brother, friend… sighing a breath of hopeful miraculous relief that their children will finally be free.
(we should all be grieving.)
Children watch fireworks over the Kebesquasheshing River in Chapleau; Canada Day 2021
Here is the bend: in the whispering trees in the babbling water where cattails cackle with secrets untold.
Here is the river: where oar breaks water makes a stir of ripples sharing gossip with geese busy-ness of beaver dam carries on and on.
Here is life: undisturbed and always disturbed by growing and going moving against current where river is never the same letting the current take me away where I am apart–
a part of something always changing always moving rising falling ebbing flowing freezing thawing
going–
around the bend again where dead tree finds life dried reed is resuscitated wet and glistening and the cat-tails yowl and tortoise sneers and water sings with its breathing chorus.
There is a ghost that claws beneath my skin– it grips at my lungs until I forget to breathe, and holds onto my heart ’til there is no beat;
there is a ghost that crawls through every inner room, puts red tags on all of my things; tells me I am failing, falling, crashing, as I try to triage every little thing.
But that laundry basket is green maybe black: stationary unmoving it’s not going anywhere and I can wear clothes out of a basket for another week.
Last night’s dinner dishes are yellow tagged: they can wait until today’s dinner is cooking.
Child’s plea to play: red red red like love like life-blood like you can put the chores away, red like you can soak in this moment and this day.
Red like your life depends on it Yellow like the chimney needs to be cleaned Green like the laundry basket
Tag it black: if it is unmoving, if it can wait another day, if it never mattered anyway.
“I am alive and well, I release what doesn’t belong to me…”
i wear my heart like a third eye — it rests on my forehead, sees the world too close, too much, too all-at-once
and it belongs to breaking; repeats a mantra to come back together again, but still whispers a combatant confession: i have seen/felt too much to release.
“I am alive and well, I am loved, supported, and in control…”
…and still– not. head too controlled by third eye heart; heart too overwhelmed by moving world
and belly: quakes in response aches in response to third eye and heart combined;
asks head: why are you wearing your heart like that?
heart whispers back: so i can see. and head feels. and belly quakes/aches/breaks.
a body in thirds, centred; heart as third eye: imbalance.
Poet’s note: Every October, there is a bittersweetness in the air. To quote L.M. Montgomery, “I’m so glad I live in a world where there are Octobers.” October is the marking of my secondborn daughter’s birth, but it is also a marker of remembrance: as the month of Pregnancy and Infant Loss Awareness Day (October 15th), I felt stirred to share two particular poems of mine. I am #oneinfour and will not be quiet about my experiences, both hopeful (as in Lydia) and mournful (as in The Cradle). I am glad to live in a world where there are Octobers, and where I am not alone. Thank you for reading. — Maxine
Lydia
There is an empty pit in my womb that cries out for the existence of you. Hoping this is not a test, but truth instead and even though we could never afford you and ends are hard enough to connect;
I still feel you, in the deepest part of my womb, feel your heart beating between mine, crying out with that old, familiar song: I love you, I love you, I love you; Lydia.
You already had a name, Daddy already saying “she” and “her” as if he knew, and craving to hold you, just as I did. Lydia, you already had a name. Lydia, a place reserved in our hearts. Lydia, never doubt you were wanted…
But Mommy and Daddy couldn’t afford you and we never intended to be rid of you. Though this empty pit in my womb is all for the best and just so you know, in your non-existence; I cried at the first sign that you were gone. Mourning you in the same fashion mothers mourn miscarriages.
Because Lydia, we loved you before we even knew for sure. Lydia, this empty womb waits for you. Lydia, Lydia Lydia; our joy was in a waltz with fear but we had such hope for you: A dream for our little family, my little dear.
and Mommy’s been here before, but there was never hope waiting There was never solidity, never the want, there was never you: our baby. Lydia, wait for me until we’re ready.
The test is now negative, guilt replacing you in my empty womb
But Lydia, I’ll wait for you.
The Cradle
This body was not carved correctly for a baby
That’s what I tell myself when you fell from my womb cradle dropping bloodied chunks of my uterine lining when I turned my stomach inside, outside, inside again (I tried to hold you in)
While my tree linings swung cradle from thin branch to thin branch only to crash, to fall, cradle and all; and I tried to hold you in, tried to carve my failing womb into a cradle to house you
And she fell from the womb too soon my womb, my body, unwilling to hold her in while my mind was so desperate to carve tree branches into something sturdy
but my womb was made up of something brittle inside and then tree branches snapped, then the cradle falls
And I wonder what my innards are carved from— whole pieces of the child that was beginning to stain my underthings Tree branches so brittle, this cradle might have been carved from bone and I’d give up my ribcage just to hold you in I’d give up my whole life just to know my body was carved correctly to make a cradle for the baby I miscarried
I’d become a carpenter just to cut down that tree before it falls, before cradle comes crashing down, baby and all and this was all happening inside of me, so I wonder: weren’t we carved from the same tree wasn’t my body strong enough to carve a cradle rather than a casket
Weren’t you strong enough to sleep through it all; Baby, sleep, don’t cry, don’t fall.
Lydia is previously published in Swimming with Elephants Publications’ Catching Calliope Winter 2015 edition and The Cradle is previously published in Parade, Swimming with Elephants Publications’ 2018 anthology.
Maxine L. Peseke is a writer, mother, and sometimes freelance editor; she also works closely with Swimming with Elephants Publications, LLC, as an organizational assistant. She is currently living in a small Northern Ontario town, transplanted from New Mexico respectively where she originally met each of Saturday’s Sirens as part of the Albuquerque poetry community.
Since the pandemic, she has rejoined the group for regular virtual meetings.
into a day looking forward to the end, before the first bite of coffee nips at my lips
I’d like to fall asleep before I’ve even woken.
into a week wishing everybody could have a Wednesday holiday, just to offer midweek reprieve between Monday blues and Friday’s hopeful praise
I’d like to have a reason to wake up on Wednesdays again.
into a month wondering when summer fades into fall and what will September bring when July has already felt too long
I want to backtrack to November’s first snowfall.
into a year I’ve seen thirty of them now, and remember half as many: prior to twelve is foggy from sea of bad memories and trauma; beyond twenty, I have recollected memories and pushed more to the side, and I’d prefer the next ten years to be peaceful, and come in stride
But this hour pushes back, instead, stretched to infinity.
Maxine L. Peseke is a writer, mother, and sometimes freelance editor; she also works closely with Swimming with Elephants Publications, LLC, as an organizational assistant. She is currently living in a small Northern Ontario town, transplanted from New Mexico respectively where she originally met each of Saturday’s Sirens as part of the Albuquerque poetry community.
Since the pandemic, she has rejoined the group for regular virtual meetings.
Saturday's Sirens 