The instructor guides us
to the fetal position
I recall balling up & in
when I lost my first
baby and hormones tore
me to the kitchen floor
on Frosty Lane, God, help
The day my teenager
told me she lost
her best friend, an accident,
and it crushed her
to the floor of my office
In the fetal position
she curled around
herself in protection
The smell of maroon
carpet, the color of blood
We wanted to return
to go back before
to go back when
What life is too hard
to be alive and
too far along in
wonder & relations
& meaning to want to die?
The instructor explains
this fetal position
symbolizes new life
and new beginnings
We are going to
embrace it, together
I am gentle
I am alive
To imagine the first
form of your life with
all that potential
for joy and to cry
Published in Cider Press Review, Volume 26, Issue 5.
Kaisa Ullsvik Miller (she/her) is a poet and artist from Wisconsin. She is the author of Unspoiled Air (winner of the Motherwell Prize from Fence Books) and has had poetry published or upcoming in South Carolina Review, Ploughshares, Fence, Sugar House Review, HUNGER, deComp, and elsewhere. She also loves to draw and take photos of the prairie where she lives in Wisconsin. You can find her at @kaisamilla.
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