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.