Poetry from Jill Michelle

Photo: Milad Fakurian

Underwater

She hides outside this white-walled room
the never-painted nursery

grief pulling at her hems
like a toddler.

She sits, swaddles it
long enough for her funeral blacks

to ivy over. Unfinished flowers
fall from her skirts. Red petals.

Motherhood, the bright bulb
her moth-heart circles

though she knows
it might kill her.

Family, her mermaid’s dream of legs
of underwater Ferris Wheels

spinning possibilities, turned
sick circle, sad carnival of ovaries.

She wakes, another day to choke
down her ocean of loss

the pecking thoughts:
Was it because, because, because…?
.

.
Jill Michelle‘s latest poems appear/are forthcoming in Bacopa Literary Review, BoomerLitMag, Drunk Monkeys, Funicular Magazine and Tipton Poetry Journal. Recent anthology credits include The Book of Bad Betties (Bad Betty Press, UK) and Words from the Brink (Arachne Press Limited, UK). She teaches at Valencia College in Orlando, Florida. Find more of her work at byjillmichelle.com.