By: Brittany Helmick
Elegy with Anything that Wears its Offspring Like an Ornamental Shawl
Wolf spider, it wasn’t that
I didn’t expect you. It was that
I didn’t expect you then, in the dim
basement as I bent over the dryer
to retrieve the laundry, hot static
webbing it to my hands. I thought
perhaps you had fluttered down from
nowhere like some sort of lost moth.
But I could find no silk web blown
accidentally toward me. Just your dissatisfaction
about being ignored. How long were you
hiding in this light? You had to know
what was coming. I smashed you,
watched your legs curl into your body,
the wood on a pencil as it’s shaved
into itself, a ribbon being dragged
between blade and thumb.
When I pulled my hand away,
your babies scrambled off your back
like smart little crickets under the whites of my eyes.
I’ve heard for every spider a person sees
there’s at least a dozen more, unseen.
The odds of finding them a million
to one. Could I have made room
for us both? I know I shouldn’t have
killed you. But I can’t trust anything
that wears its offspring like an ornamental shawl.
You should understand more than anyone I was afraid
that if I stayed backed into this corner tight enough,
it would start to feel like a hug. If I had to keep track
of every spider I’ve ever killed, I’d wear their bodies
like a rosary. My fingers running over each one,
in prayer.
The Sky This Morning and the Mountain Below
Snow leans against
the mountain just beyond the valley.
My mother sits, watches
from her window.
It’s a slow surprise,
she says to no one, how godlike
the mountain looks morning
after morning. How it still
appears the same. Sometimes
at night, we forget the sun
is rising elsewhere, but now,
in the match-strike
between yellow, pink, and orange
she is ablaze again. What if
grief is a woman
wearing a snow-capped mountain
around her neck?
What if what I thought
about my mother
is actually what I thought
about myself?
What if my mother is
a marmalade god, and I
made myself the mountain below.
White Kitten as a True Dichotomy
After Jericho Brown’s Duplex
The opposite of love is indifference.
The only gift my mother gave me was a white toy kitten.
I was six when I unwrapped it in the kitchen,
pressed its body against my ear, until its sounds softened
to a quiet cry. Over time, sounds softened to a quiet cry;
My first words were mom and goodbye.
Dear kitten, what if I never said goodbye?
What if I never left you to yellow in my closet?
Nothing can grow in darkness. Though we imagine
there’s a change from white to yellow to black.
Mom used to keep our windows covered in black
garbage bags. I never had the nerve to ask why.
If I have loved, it’s because I, too, have covered my eyes.
The opposite of love is indifference.
Brittany Helmick (she/her) grew up in the high desert of the Pacific Northwest. She was a finalist for the Sustainable Arts Foundation’s Promise Award in 2019. Her work has appeared in Manastash, Akron Life Magazine, The Journal of American Language, Project Muse, Empty Mirror, and Rubbertop Review. She is still fascinated by humidity and all its many tricks.
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