Traumatic Brain Injury
by Chelsea Dingman
There are certain sounds that transform
what we forget, what we remember—:
the reassuring rhythm of the clock. The rattle
of a fork on teeth. The mouth, petrified
open as machines bleatbleat bleatbleat.
The first beat of your baby’s heart
on a monitor. The flat line like years & months,
long forgotten. The splintered laugh
of a woman so like your mother, except
your mother is the almost-ghost
of refrigerator light in the kitchen
at midnight. And which memory are you? —
Are you the field swallowing milk
thistle, hoping for a cure
to this life? Whatever did you need
to be cured of: the disease
or the treatment? The sound of your heart, winding
down? Years later, I’m looking back
at who you were when you were the sick
crunch of snow under our boots. The lonely
ache of the blackbird’s call. I’m trying to tell you
about the first winter without you:
the leaves have let go. Bare, the trees are
resplendent, like all things that we love
for what they lost when they were most alive.
Chelsea Dingman’s first book, Thaw, was chosen by Allison Joseph to win the National Poetry Series (University of Georgia Press, 2017). She is also the author of a chapbook, What Bodies Have I Moved (Madhouse Press, 2018). She has won prizes such as: The Southeast Review’s Gearhart Poetry Prize, The Sycamore Review’s Wabash Prize, Water-stone Review’s Jane Kenyon Poetry Prize, and The South Atlantic Modern Language Association’s Creative Writing Award for Poetry. Her work is forthcoming in Poetry Northwest, Salt Hill, and The Southern Review, among others. Visit her website: chelseadingman.com.