August, still

Born, I cried,

and growing, I cried.

Gathering the broken egg, I cried.

Making the pancakes, eating the pancakes,

cleaning up after the pancakes, I cried.

Watching you swim to the deep area, I cried.

Watching you return to the shallows, I cried.

When my husband could not love me

like I wanted, I cried.

When I could not love my husband

as he needed, I cried.

When we loved each other anyway, I cried.

 

And then, there was the pulling of the weeds,

which I did all morning, crying,

and the watching them return,

which I did all afternoon, crying.

Now, evening, and what am I to do

but pull the weeds again,

and let the mosquitos suck on me,

and watch the stars come out, one by one?

---

Nicole Callihan’s books include SuperLoop (Sockmonkey Press 2014), and the chapbooks A Study in Spring (2015), The Deeply Flawed Human (2016), Downtown (2017), and Aging (2018). Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Tin House, Sixth Finch, Painted Bride Quarterly, The American Poetry Review, and as a Poem-a-Day selection from the Academy of American Poets. Her latest project, Translucence, a dual-language, cross-culture collaboration with Palestinian poet Samar Abdel Jaber, was released by Indolent Books in 2018.