We Light a Candle
Salt Hill Journal 2021
Content Warning: Suicide
This poem began in straightforward form, governed by a linear chronology. But in a poem of remembering, does a linear chronology make sense? Sometimes, remembered events fuse, overlap, bleed together, become something new. In revision, I sought a structure that would capture this feeling of time as it exists in memory. I wanted this to be a poem of simultaneity, of time's inextricable layering: the instant and the shadow cast by the instant, the anniversary, the weeks until metamorphosis, the candle that burns for a night and a day.
1.
Ten days ago our son’s babysitter left us a monarch caterpillar.
2.
This evening we lit a candle for a boy on the one-year anniversary of his death.
3.
You have likely seen a monarch caterpillar: yellow and black stripes.
4.
As to the candle, we lit it in our house: a yahrzeit candle, white in a little glass, which burns in remembrance for twenty-four hours.
5.
The caterpillar grew and grew, like in a picture book.
6.
The death was self-inflicted.
7.
Each night my husband returned with milkweed in his hands.
8.
I don’t know another way to say it in a poem.
9.
In the mornings, he cleaned out black balls of waste.
10.
As my students arrived to light the candle, I asked them to remove their shoes. Then so many came, in tall boots, black and chunky, some with elaborate lacings.
11.
The dog barked, then lay down, shedding her fur on the carpet in clumps.
12.
The caterpillar went into its chrysalis, which was green like a spring leaf and begged to be touched.
13.
A girl lit the candle. A boy said Kaddish. My husband read from Psalm 23, about the valley of the shadow of death.
14.
The chrysalis lay on the floor of its container, because it hadn’t successfully hung itself.
15.
I am aware of my language.
16.
It makes my face blaze and my throat close up.
17.
I wondered about the dreams of my children, sleeping downstairs—if fear would enter there.
18.
But the chrysalis must hang. Otherwise, the wings cannot form.
19.
My students wept. I moved two tissue boxes to the counter, next to the candle.
20.
The baby monitor was on the counter, next to the candle. I moved it to the floor.
21.
We turned to the chrysalis.
22.
We located the pupa’s black stem. Three attempts to fix the chrysalis in glue resulted in the body falling. On the fourth attempt, we flipped the chrysalis to a hanging position.
23.
Only then did I weep.
24.
Only then did the chrysalis remind me of pregnancy, when the body protects without help from the mind.
25.
When a person emerges, his wings take an unusual shape.
26.
Fear trails behind him.
27.
I thought of my son spinning and spinning on the carpet: his laughter, his desire for nothing to end.
28.
Before he could speak, he could sign. First, more. Then,
29.
(the candle)
30.
that favorite word:
31.
(burning)
32.
again.