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      May 23, 2025Chelsea McClellanSestina Sophia

      I wondered if uncertainty was wisdom—
      kindness? Left to hope, and to compare
      the symptoms—just a little blood—and rest
      was the prescription. How? When prayers were shouting
      through and out my flesh without consent. The loss
      was imminent. No kindness, question, child.
        
      The morphine made my voice speak as a child’s—
      a run of sap without a sieve. When wisdom
      said to filter out the flies, instead, I lost
      my mind in foaming maple, dared compare
      the lady nurse with someone holy, shouting
      praises, even as the septic laid my baby to rest.
        
      We laid the proof of her existence down to rest
      as if the test and bloodied tissue were my child.
      I picked a spot inside the circle drive, shouted
      to her daddy that I’m ready. My girl, Wisdom,
      Sophia, shall I find a flower to compare?
      No, a seed, tucked in by blanketflowers still flowerless.
        
      When I was finally left alone, I lost
      myself in yellow hugs—her onesie, resting
      on the shoulders of another—I compared
      the bunny’s fur with baby’s hair, sang children’s
      lullabies to her and to myself, just barely wise
      enough to hide it in the bed before the daily shout—
        
      Daddy’s home!—she never had the voice to shout,
      nor voice to say what I was thinking, at a loss
      for words, when a friend with temporary loss of wisdom
      said, At least you know you can get pregnant. Restless
      shame peeks around the corner to remind me—Child.
      You didn’t say, child—say, how dare you to compare
        
      this loss to mere imagination—compare
      my child to a wispy hope evaporated—my shouts
      of labor pains to rote menstruation? Child.
      You didn’t say child.—Though I’m sorry for his loss
      of words, I’m sorrier for mine. The burden rests
      on me to birth the phrase that brings my girl to life—Wisdom,
        
      Sophia, must I? Birth comparison to prove your life?
      When the common, sun-warmed clay already shouts that all the rest
      have felt the light—where children stare but fathers close their eyes
                      to my Sophia, Wisdom.
        

      from #87 – Spring 2025

      Chelsea McClellan

      “Of all the means of contemplation and expression, I do not know exactly why it was poetry that stuck, but writing has become a compulsion. It was the music of Poe’s ‘The Raven’ which first latched onto me as a teen, and Rhina Espaillat’s ‘Changeling’ which first drew me into the world of contemporary poetry. I love that poetry is able to reach places, say, to the inside of an empty womb, which are socially unacceptable; it skips the small talk.”

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