Anniversary

Outside, an abandoned mattress sags with rain
and the driveway turns all sludge when I remember
I could’ve died eight years ago, in a bed
smaller than the one I share with a new lover
who just this morning found another grey hair in my afro,
and before resettling the wiry curl with the others,
kissed the freckle on my forehead.
I admit, I don’t know a love that doesn’t
destroy. Last night while we slept,
a mouse drowned in the rice pot
I left soaking in the sink. I tried
to make a metaphor out of this, the way
he took the mouse to the edge of the lake in the yard,
released it to a deeper grave. It was
an anniversary, just my lover
taking a dead thing away, taking it
somewhere I couldn’t see.

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“The inspiration for this poem came to me during the beginning of the Coronavirus pandemic, which coincided with the anniversaries of several traumatic events in my personal history. I had faced death almost 8 years prior and was facing death once again, now on a global scale. Death seemed ever persistent to find me. Yet amidst all of this, I found kindness, a love that felt so unfamiliar to me but always deeply desired.”
—Diannely Antigua

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“No woman wants to bear
whatever could be the name for this grief.”

—“My Mother and Lucille Clifton Have Tea” by Parneshia Jones