Birth
n. The first and direst of all disasters.
—Ambrose Bierce
On this second child’s eighteenth birthday, I plunge through the
galaxies of what-ifs, pint-sized images, satellites circling that first
amber-locked ache, gather the dried twigs of distant tragedy and
let memory’s unerring flame make smoke clouds of the direst
days: those winter weeks we woke, bedclothes dotted in shades of
red from candy-apple-fresh to burgundy-aged—pregnancies, all
never afters, babies tumbling from my body, trapdoor of disasters.
© Jill Michelle
Jill Michelle is the author of Underwater (Riot in Your Throat, 2025) and Shuffle Play (Bottlecap, 2024) and winner of the 2023 NORward Prize for Poetry from New Ohio Review. Her newest work is forthcoming in Here: a poetry journal, Salamander Magazine and The South Carolina Review. She teaches at Valencia College in Orlando, Florida. Find more at byjillmichelle.com.
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