May

Today it is the first of May the first day of the year-o.

So many jolly songs welcome us to the beginning of this merry month. And it is, in this green kingdom of New England, absolutely bliss this month of May, with huge fat blossoms everywhere and all at once, the smell of wet earth, and the warm sun on everything. I feel so grateful that my daughter's death happened to fall in such a time of life, as I mourn her loss of life I see around me everywhere everything bursting with what she lost, and while at times this seems to mock me, at the same time there is beauty everywhere, and this is soothing.

I am grateful that the things that I plant for my little girl gently open into bloom beginning at the time that I was waiting for her birth; she was due on the 5th of May and so you can imagine, from late April onwards there was this waiting, this anticipation, and spring crept onward as my belly blossomed and the smells that surrounded me filled the world with nectar.

But May brings with it a longing to escape, to turn off the calendar and get away from the sadness, to breathe in isolation and to turn myself inward. My lashes fall heavy over my eyes as I see the world going on. My clock ticks forward to the end of another year, to early in the morning on the 13th. Somewhere in the hour of 4 in the morning the guillotine slammed down upon the life that I once lived and I began again, a slighter, depleted version of my former self.

For months afterwards, without fail, I awoke when the clock read 4: something on my bedside table, I could feel the blade falling again and again, shearing away at my will to live.

Is it true, really, that the 12th of May and the 14th of May are only a day apart?

Not in my world.