What to Tell the Girl
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Sophia lifts the leaves above her head,then lets them fall to earth a second time.She knows, but is not sorry they are dead.Far away, the silver church bells chime,
even though it’s Tuesday afternoon,for mourners. But her laughter is a charmagainst the haunted mind, the daylight moonlooming in the sky. She means no harm,
so when she asks if I could bury her,I can’t say no. I build the pile high,then under all those quiet leaves, I heara staggering breath as she begins to cry.
I whisk her out. It was so dark insideall the colors, and I couldn’t see—.What to tell the girl? I can’t decide,and so I simply hold her close to me.
But now I realize what I should have told her:Darkness is the least we have to fear,and soon, Sophia, as your heart grows older,as autumn leads to winter, year to year,
when empty branches whinny and crash, when windwails hard against the houses, cold and violent,hurling the leaves in helpless arcs—you’ll findyour dim reflection in the window, silent, [End Page 465]
and before your eyes, the dark will close again,on you alone. You’ll want to reminisce,but as the windows rattle with the train,you won’t know what to think of. So think of this:
How even as you cried, you were lifted out,and how the weight above you was so light—how even though your whimper wasn’t loud,I heard you; how the leaves were still so bright,
even though they seemed so dark to you—and remember how you left my arms to play,how soon you forgot your fear, as children do.Then lift the leaves, and let them fall away.
for Sophia [End Page 466]
ASHLEY ANNA McHUGH’s debut poetry collection, Into These Knots, was the 2010 winner of The New Criterion Poetry Prize. More recently, Become All Flame, a limited-edition chapbook of her poetry, was published by LATR Editions. She was the 2009 winner of the Morton Marr Poetry Prize, and her poems have appeared in Nimrod, The Journal, Measure, The New Criterion, and elsewhere.
