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The Lost Months

By Taryn Pecile

I wasn’t bleeding by the end of March.
Not a single drop through that long April,
and so I went to the doctor in May.
I gave you your name on the fifth of June
and finished the nursery in mid-July.
But you died in the dry heat of August. 
 
The months that I carried you, to August
and your death, looking back at our slow march,
days pop like fireworks on the Fourth of July.
The first time I thought of you, tenth of April.
The first thing I bought for you, seventh of June.
The first time I felt you move, late May. 
 
My child, you were never just a maybe—
you lived in dreams and screens until August.
I saw you in an ultrasound in June
and I see you still in my dreams, marching
away from me. My sweet girl, my April,
you pop in my mind like the Fourth of July. 
 
Your baby shower, the eighth of July.
Everything pink, white, baby blue. Maybe
thirty people. Our family, April.
Nobody looking towards death in August,
just the life growing inside me since March.
My full belly showing you since mid-June. 
 
That was the best month—sunny, happy June.
Before the sweat and pain of late July,
and past the anxious tiptoe that was March.
June was sweet, and you were alive. August
was the furthest thing from my mind. Aunt May
set up a college fund for you, April. 
 
My child, my love, my daughter, my sweet April.
If we could have lived forever in June,
still one flesh and unaware of August—
looking only toward July,
and never knowing that all of this may
just be window dressings on a death march. 
 
Child, the tears of April, heat of July and June’s sunny joy—
come whatever may—
all grow cold on this grim March to August. 

 

Taryn Pecile is from a little town called Drums, Pennsylvania. She graduated in 2020 with a major in psychology and a minor in writing. In her free time, she enjoys singing and hanging out with her friends. She has been writing poetry since she was eleven years old.  Therapy, Trees/Capillaries

Filed Under: 2021 Issue, Poetry

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