by Melisa Cahnmann-Taylor

I put its little mound in the sock drawer but it insisted on going for a walk. Behind glass it kept staring with those mopey eyes, begging me to let it come back inside. I let its dirty paws press into my bare legs. It slept, maybe three hours, like a baby, but then it woke screaming. I called doctors, I read it books, I gave it candy, and none of it soothed. I covered my head with a pillow. I told myself: ignore it, this will make it go away, this will teach it a lesson.

Continue with “Grief Part V“

Melisa Cahnmann-Taylor, University of Georgia Meigs Professor of Education, is the author of The Creative Ethnographer’s Notebook, Imperfect Tense (poems) and five other books on the arts of language and education. Recipient of numerous NEA Big Read Grants, a NEA Distinguished Fellowship, Hambidge Residency Award, and the Beckman award, her poems, translations, and creative nonfiction have appeared in Georgia Review, Bitter Southerner, Lilith, Poet Lore, Rattle, American Poetry Review, Barrow Street, Hadassah, Plume and elsewhere.