6 months, 5 days, 1 hour by Monica Fuglei
Please remember:
soon you will be through this moment –
a half-year from now, you will
sit at your computer,
daughter on your lap.
She is too lanky to quite fit
like she used to fit,
when her head was just under your chin
her legs jutting out at the tops of your knees.
Without warning,
her head will be too high
for a chinrest,
her legs uncomfortably long
on your lap, her feet tapping
out time on your shins.
You will stare
at the back of her head
while you listen to a Hawaiian man
croon Somewhere over the Rainbow.
You will smell a mix
of perfumed shampoo and musky play,
her eyes focused in the distance,
head cocked to the side, listening.
You will remember
that the Hawaiian man is dead
and this is an anniversary of sorts,
the half-birthday of a death
you’ve avoided
while tending the memory of the man.
And finally, you will cry
not for the man lying in cold Nebraska ground,
but for this body spun of your body,
this breath , this heartbeat
no longer seeking to match yours
but weaving itself into the universe
and away from you
from the moment of conception
to completion.
“This poem relates some of the experience I had, distracting my 5 year old daughter, shortly before the loss of my stepfather. I was writing to the future me - trying to help her understand the depth of loss she was feeling and yet also see how deeply it fits into the cycles of the world - that the daughter on her lap would one day be within that cycle as well. I wanted future me to understand how precious that moment was. I wrote that poem about fifteen years ago, revised it significantly, and still have never sent it out - as it never, really, feels as though it invites a reader into the experience. It is a simple and private moment, one perhaps more fit for a personal journal than a publication.”
Monica Fuglei currently teaches in the Department of Composition, Creative Writing and Journalism at Arapahoe Community College in Littleton, Colorado. A 2019 Pushcart Prize nominee, her work has recently appeared in Progenitor Magazine and Mason Street. When she’s not writing or teaching, she’s usually knitting or tweeting on #AcademicTwitter.