First Place, Poetry, NMW Awards 26 - Trish Lindsey Jaggers

On the Night They Took Your Life

There was a ring around the moon,

and I went looking for you, outside, when the stale air inside

grew too easy, too still, and my knitting stomach

slipped its stitches.

There you were, you were,

between the old April cracks thawed

through the ground, and the stars

we'd shared since you left me, left me, left

my body. I said, “What's the matter, baby?”

and I wanted you back,

a baby, my baby—

fastened to my breast,

your breath, my life,

white drops pearled around your tiny mouth—

just so you'd believe me once again

when I say, “The world is your Milky Way.”

You were there, beneath the sugar maples,

their syrups drumming against thin wood; you

cast no shadow in their shade, the moon a ring

of light at your feet.

You said, “I just need to see the earth

from the sky,” and I knew

the war had sliced the moon

from your sky, shot

all the light from your stars. You were glad

to be home, on this farm, on this hill,

where the circles of night sky

meet the torn edges of land.

You said, “There's a ring

around the moon,” and we sat together

beneath the ring. The moon waxed colder

behind a hush of haze, threw unsteady light

on your unreadable face. I drew you close,

felt your baby ring, safe on its silver chain,

tight against my throat, said, “Talk to me,

tell me everything. Let it go.”

I need to share the air, warm

as the edge of autumn—a slow-turning season,

when the pulse slows, green to yellow, to red—slow

as the syrup slipping over the edge

of your plate this morning, when I called your name,

knew from the sound of your empty bed

that the shrapnel of broken stars cut you

from me, from me, from me

Poetry is a facet of fiction, even classified as such, right? Clever, that presumption—as it offers a sliver of protection for the craft, too.

“On the Night They Took Your Life” came from a place of pain and intolerable loss that I almost had to live with, one that others do live with daily—a pain that no one should have to endure. Only one second's hesitation … until fiction, reality—and the lines between the two—can and will be irreparably smeared.

A time of unwanted (and unwarranted) war brings not only the “celebrated heroes,” the ones who feel they die for rights and freedoms, but also the ones who choose to die rather than kill (or because they had to kill) another human being. How are their (the latter) lives celebrated? Is suicide really a coward's way out? when each of us is born with the innate responsibility and desire to keep ourselves safe and alive? No, it takes a very certain mindset to take one's own life—for any reason. However, the threads that bind each of us are so tight that it's impossible not to feel the tug of one, particularly one who chooses to let go. That tug must be the most painful to resist—or set free.

Those tugs present to me the greatest challenges as a writer, as a survivor of my mother's suicide, my son's determination to end his life that way, and my determination that “this too” could—must—be overcome.

To me (the poet), life—its messages, translations, and images—comes in patterns, and these patterns beg for rhythm, for substance beyond ordinary utterances. Word choices, repetitions, imagery, music and cadence are extremely important to me—as long as the meaning is clear. Poetry should not couch itself as inaccessible; otherwise, it will be lost to those who need it the most. All of us. To reach one, to tug the thread of connection to another is the ultimate goal. Or should be.

- Trish Lindsey Jaggers