How fragile is the human body,
all cells and skin, tissue-thin,
light as filament in the center of the bulb,
as quick to flicker and go out.
Another one gone. Lungs to shreds,
voices done in one by one
as we lose a generation of lovers,
people with grit to bear hard things,
all that disappointment like bitters
in the throat, fire as it goes down,
medicine as it heals. O, these songs
that cradled us as we wept and were alone.
I remember a snowfall so deep
the very white of it was dark as death,
and I listened to records that sustained
my tender hold on life, each day another day
I soldiered through. And I have you to thank
for many of the moments that I chose to go on.
Meghan Sterling lives in Portland, Maine with her family. She is co-editor of the anthology A Dangerous New World: Maine Voices on the Climate Crisis published by Littoral Books. Her work has been published in Rattle, Balancing Act 2, Glass: A Journal of Poetry, Driftwood Press, Sky Island Journal, Literary Mama and others. Her chapbook How We Drift was published by Blue Lyra Press. She is a poetry reader for the Maine Review, Featured Poet in Frost Meadow Review’s Spring 2020 issue, and a Hewnoaks Artists' Colony Resident in 2019 and 2020.