{"id":2153,"date":"2021-11-30T21:49:32","date_gmt":"2021-12-01T01:49:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.ubalt.edu\/welter\/?page_id=2153"},"modified":"2021-12-04T21:45:54","modified_gmt":"2021-12-05T01:45:54","slug":"december-2020","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/blogs.ubalt.edu\/welter\/poetry-archive\/december-2020\/","title":{"rendered":"December 2020"},"content":{"rendered":"\r\n

\"\"<\/strong><\/p>\r\n

December (2020)
<\/strong>Stuti Pachisia<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

before I know it, the season is mourning.\u00a0<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

I am young enough to be crying
furiously, quietly, for a residual
sadness that only hit a full year
after it happened. I am young\u00a0
enough to feel, still, a numbing grief\u00a0
fill my ends, whitened spots where\u00a0
blood should be.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

Younger, I read about people as\u00a0
rings of a tree, each year circling
the other; people as matryoshka dolls;
at their cores: very small; at the essence:
susceptible to easy joys, easy\u00a0
loss. This year people get
younger.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

Outside, I see ghosts everywhere.\u00a0
Our grief needs to materialize in
vacant gaps where red leaves were,\u00a0
split streets where laughter was, blank\u00a0
skies where gold light was. We are haunted.
Our afters are shaped like better pasts.
Right now, neither exists.\u00a0<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

On the coldest day this year, Laura returns.\u00a0
In the freezing rain, we walk past a garden\u00a0
which I say, is my favorite: it blooms, luscious\u00a0
in autumn but which, for now\u2014December\u2014is bare-bones.\u00a0
She points that this is a graveyard. In autumn, behind\u00a0
spiraling flowers that shapeshift by time of day,\u00a0
I never notice the headstones.\u00a0
In December, they rise like jagged thorns, splitting
open the hard earth.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

Younger, every child I knew claimed that\u00a0
beneath their school lay a graveyard.\u00a0
We revealed this as a quiet secret only\u00a0
The Children could know. We knew what\u00a0
The Adults would never tell us: all of\u00a0
human growth has been the act of\u00a0
building atop interred bones. Our bases\u00a0<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

are made of grief. Later, Laura says goodbye.
We hold hands, desperate at the thought of\u00a0
slipping, the renewed letting go. She smiles\u00a0
and reminds me, “We’re still alive, you know?”
She runs to the train, a pink flush in icy cold.\u00a0<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

When I turn, December breaks. The gaps in
the earth fill with white snow.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n

\r\n\r\n\r\n

Stuti Pachisia<\/strong> is a doctoral candidate & poet based in Cambridge, UK and Calcutta, India. Reach out to her on Twitter: @steewtweets.<\/span><\/p>\r\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

December (2020)Stuti Pachisia before I know it, the season is mourning.\u00a0 I am young enough to be cryingfuriously, quietly, for a residualsadness that only hit a full yearafter it happened. Continue Reading →<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3221,"featured_media":0,"parent":1261,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubalt.edu\/welter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/2153"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubalt.edu\/welter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubalt.edu\/welter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubalt.edu\/welter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3221"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubalt.edu\/welter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2153"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubalt.edu\/welter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/2153\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2318,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubalt.edu\/welter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/2153\/revisions\/2318"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubalt.edu\/welter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1261"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubalt.edu\/welter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2153"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}