On Beginning to Heal

To reach the raised-bed garden, I drag my body through
the caterpillar grass and fescue until I’m at the cinderblocks
packed with dirt and the marigolds I grew
to ward off pests. The flowers failed. I take a rock,

pluck squash bugs from leaves’ pale
underbellies and smear their guts. Each insect
death is a heavy death, so I hush-wail
I’m sorry, I’m sorry. The necks

of thick-rind squash curve: a yellow grin
or frown, depending on the way you see
the contour, and the tomatoes rupture, skin
split like a wound and the mint, sprawled green

almost to seed, spits out its minuscule purple flowers,
so tiny but tough as bullets.

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Bridget Bell teaches English at Durham Technical Community College in Durham, NC. She also proofreads poetry manuscripts for Four Way Books. Her work has been published in several literary journals including Eclectica, The New Ohio Review, The Los Angeles Review Online, and Folio, among others. Her poem, "Raising Mothers," was recently featured in a presentation called 'The Trials, Tolls, and Triumphs of Motherhood: The Many Faces of Postpartum Depression," through the Psychoanalytic Center of the Carolinas.