Other women don't tell you
by Julia Kolchinsky Dasbach
about the hair, how it falls out, webs
between your fingers and streams
in the shower and clumps on your pillow
and on the floor and in the hands of one
who still loves you. They say it'll grow back.
Thicker even. But you don't believe them.
They've lied before. And they don't tell you
about the split, how you can fit
a fist between your left and right sides.
You can work to make it narrower, they say,
build back the muscles in your abdomen
and pelvic floor. It just takes time.
You can get it all back, they say, but you know
that is not the point. And you knew you'd be tired,
that the body can only keep up for so long.
They warned you days would be long but years
would fly and again, they were wrong,
because everything is flying and the rain
is coming down the way July had never known it.
And you think, my body was an ark once.
And you ask, would it still float? And in days,
your son will have breathed air as long as water.
And maybe Noah was a woman too.
They never told you this. But the rain
is coming and you are holding
a wad of your own hair in one hand
as your son's head rests along the other.
And you think, they never told you
any of this. How your hands
would never keep up.
between your fingers and streams
in the shower and clumps on your pillow
and on the floor and in the hands of one
who still loves you. They say it'll grow back.
Thicker even. But you don't believe them.
They've lied before. And they don't tell you
about the split, how you can fit
a fist between your left and right sides.
You can work to make it narrower, they say,
build back the muscles in your abdomen
and pelvic floor. It just takes time.
You can get it all back, they say, but you know
that is not the point. And you knew you'd be tired,
that the body can only keep up for so long.
They warned you days would be long but years
would fly and again, they were wrong,
because everything is flying and the rain
is coming down the way July had never known it.
And you think, my body was an ark once.
And you ask, would it still float? And in days,
your son will have breathed air as long as water.
And maybe Noah was a woman too.
They never told you this. But the rain
is coming and you are holding
a wad of your own hair in one hand
as your son's head rests along the other.
And you think, they never told you
any of this. How your hands
would never keep up.
Julia Kolchinsky Dasbach emigrated from Dnepropetrovsk, Ukraine when she was six years old. She holds an MFA in Poetry from the University of Oregon and is working on a Ph.D. at the University of Pennsylvania’s Comparative Literature & Literary Theory program where her research focuses on contemporary American poetry related to the Holocaust. Her poems have appeared in Gulf Coast, TriQuarterly, Missouri Review, and Narrative Magazine, among others. She has received fellowships from the Bread Loaf and TENT Conferences as well as the Auschwitz Jewish Center. Julia is the author of, The Bear Who Ate the Stars, winner of Split Lip Magazine's 2014 Uppercut Chapbook Award. She is also Editor-in-Chief of Construction Magazine. Visit her wordpress to reach her or read her failed blogging attempts.