Megan Merchant
To have a child born in a natural disaster—
the rush overwhelmed cactus roots
and cracked bed, swept a red truck
down the road. A child that burdened
from my body of blood and water,
one who asks how to unknot his dreams,
says he wants to become a tornado.
To have a child that calls his headaches
faint, is hounded by ways to shadow
away from others on the playground.
To have a child that changed my under-
standing of seize. To take—the earthquake
that lifted our house, shook the mirrors.
I did not see myself run into the kitchen
empty-handed. What does it mean
to have a child’s forgiveness and not
your own? To have a child that slams
his forehead against every hard surface
until the word goose egg becomes
a tenderness between us. One that cannot
tolerate light touch. How I used to rake
my nails against his father’s back. Leave
a map of longing or destruction.
As if either one could be extricated from
the topography of a long marriage.
To then have a child whose future
is stuck in the quiet eye of the storm,
alarms sounding every direction.
To have a child walking this earth that
reminds me of no one I have ever met.
But like wind, rootless, refusing to latch.
Megan Merchant (she/her) is the owner of www.shiversong.com and holds an M.F.A. degree in International Creative Writing from UNLV. She is the author of three full-length collections with Glass Lyre Press, four chapbooks, and a children’s book, These Words I Shaped for You (Penguin Random House). Her book, Before the Fevered Snow, was released in April 2020 with Stillhouse Press (NYT New & Noteworthy). She was awarded the 2016-2017 COG Literary Award, the 2018 Beullah Rose Poetry Prize, the Inaugural Michelle Boisseau Prize and most recently the New American Poetry Prize. She is the Editor of Pirene’s Fountain. You can find her poems and artwork at meganmerchant.wix.com/poet