Tia Factor, Retreat, 2015 (Artist Website, Instagram)
Oil paint and acrylic ink on wood panel
5” x 7”
Everyone was saying I would kill
to protect the children,
as though saying so would galvanize them
against the corrosion of loss, salt, water,
—snow. I can’t shake this. Every nightmare
strikes me from the sheets like lightning
waking the baby as I stumble into her room
hug her in, longing to meld her to myself,
be her house again. My body
which used to be so strong,
which used to believe it could fight
what frightened me.
Child, when our eyes connected
the reel started running, a crash, a fever,
a cancer. Every night, what isn’t happening to you
happens to someone else, and I feel the frost,
its powerful death bloom closer, every night
I fall through the spiral that ends in winter.