Starting on the Thirteenth of July
Sadie Chernila
My son: wading through the grasses
his tiny legs itching with the weight
of a blade sharpened by weather.
My son is small and yet
already wrinkled from the sun.
I tell him sometimes:
“eat slower”
and he grabs fistfuls of arugula.
My son was born in July.
He cries sometimes because he was not born
on Christmas or
Halloween.
I tell him sometimes that he wouldn’t be as special then.
A god born on July thirteenth-- he rasped a hello.
My son woke before I did
and touched my eyelid at dawn.
I broke for him and milk rushed out of me
drying between us like a frogpond in August.
I fed him first-- before he could lift a fork.
My son likes cows because they are large
(he told me this in the car this morning)
and so we spotted one grazing through a pasture
and so we stopped and he ran.
Before he was my son he was:
air; dirt; my egg; my spit; another man’s, too.
I want to remember you in more ways than I can.
But I will start with you wading through the grasses as they itched your small legs as you were swatting away the flies and pretending you were large like a cow and you looked up at me and said “mama i lost my bracelet.”
I held him first-- and he looked up at me like I would lose him.