c m taylor
Cotton
for JR Finan, with gratitude
I am seven & sunburnt, up to my neck in alfalfa blooms
entirely alone & we never have met or will meet but we were both
alive, once—I scrolled through your Facebook
today, all the way back to before, so now I know
your birthday & that you would be older
than your also-dead father this year.
I do and don’t believe you are anywhere.
Here, there is so much room.
The sky has rediscovered blue. The tip of my nose, red.
Plumes of purple someday-hay the same above in downy cotton.
I don’t know why I’m telling you this.
Why it matters I became myself in horizonless places
or that I love your little brother or that I want to die
sometimes too or how I thought of you on your birthday
& will remember it forever. I cannot remember your death date
but have held the shape of your goneness.
Maybe thank you. Or fuck you. Maybe both.
At seven in summer I gallop through that bright hayfield
on a big black horse who breaks his knee
in autumn & I will watch the needle leave his neck
& hear the heft, the thud of him into packed dirt always.
I hope there is softness for you. And room.
I am seven & sunburnt, up to my neck in alfalfa blooms
entirely alone & we never have met or will meet but we were both
alive, once—I scrolled through your Facebook
today, all the way back to before, so now I know
your birthday & that you would be older
than your also-dead father this year.
I do and don’t believe you are anywhere.
Here, there is so much room.
The sky has rediscovered blue. The tip of my nose, red.
Plumes of purple someday-hay the same above in downy cotton.
I don’t know why I’m telling you this.
Why it matters I became myself in horizonless places
or that I love your little brother or that I want to die
sometimes too or how I thought of you on your birthday
& will remember it forever. I cannot remember your death date
but have held the shape of your goneness.
Maybe thank you. Or fuck you. Maybe both.
At seven in summer I gallop through that bright hayfield
on a big black horse who breaks his knee
in autumn & I will watch the needle leave his neck
& hear the heft, the thud of him into packed dirt always.
I hope there is softness for you. And room.
Commentary
c m on “Cotton”:
“Cotton” began as a quest for information. I like to keep track of things. I document most of my life in images, hold onto movie ticket stubs, that sort of stuff. It’s part natural inclination and part a result of a very severe case of post-traumatic stress disorder I developed as a teenager: though I have a super specific memory for things like dates or the exact phrasing of a comment, I get swaths of chronological time wrong in hindsight and lose whole days dissociating. I often need to piece reality together and have adapted habits to make it quicker.
My husband’s big brother J.R. killed himself. My husband usually has a more accurate memory than I do, but they can be vague when addressing details of their worst traumas, a trait I absolutely do not share or relate to. Early in our relationship it infuriated me, and it’s been a lesson in patience to learn slowly. Despite now knowing the story of J.R.’s death, knowing where my husband was standing the moment they heard, a few months back I realized I didn’t know the actual date it happened. Which led me to realize I didn’t know his birthday, either.
My best friend and I are what you might consider amateur thanatologists, which means that we study death and dying, and spend a lot of time discussing it. I’m not more comfortable with death than the average person, I don’t think, but I am quite comfortable talking about it. I am fascinated by and mostly accept it. We had animals when I was growing up and my mother has told me it was in part for a kind of healthy practice with mortality: you love something with your whole heart, you hurt like hell when it goes, and someday you are grateful for that love despite its loss. And you know you will live through the loss until gratitude. I believe we can love animals as deeply, if not sometimes more so, than we do human beings, and that our relationships with them can be as robust as our relationships to other human beings. The horse referenced in the poem was not only my close friend but the gateway and witness to much of my earliest freedom. He broke his knee galloping in a field while I was at a friend’s party and had to be put down; my mother picked me up from the party halfway through and brought me to say goodbye. Though she’s agonized over whether it was the right decision, though I can remember the sound his body made hitting the ground like it was yesterday, I would not trade my opportunity to reassure him of my love for anything.
I don’t know what about scrolling to J.R’s most recent posthumous birthday on Facebook made me think of cantering on Merlin’s back through those alfalfa fields of my childhood. I can picture him in a purple heaven, maybe, or maybe heaven is the memory place where we get to talk to the person the person we love misses the most. J.R. has been described to me as many things, but common among them is a sense of tremendous scale—a flair for the dramatic, a wide open heart. Inescapable pain. I recognize him in my husband and I recognize him in parts of why my husband chose me as a life partner and I am honored and I am reaching for him the best way I know how, which is on the page in a made up horizonless place where I can recount for him a piece of my own sadness to warrant my attempt at understanding his. I wanted to reassure him it’s okay, that I accept it, that my husband loves him with their whole heart and hurts like hell that he is gone and is grateful for that love despite its loss. That I am grateful for his love, too, and I hope he has escaped what he ran from. I hope he knows he was and is wanted. And I will keep his brother safe.
Assistant Editor Sofia Fey on “Cotton”:
This poem by c m taylor was a must for me in Issue 30. It navigates, seamlessly, through a difficult emotional terrain. One of loving without the physicality of even an introductory handshake. Of loving through someone else. It illustrates how people can be connected tethers of care—of how if we love someone enough, we love who they love too. This poem is a pleasure to read, and one that will come to me again and again in my headspace.
“Cotton” began as a quest for information. I like to keep track of things. I document most of my life in images, hold onto movie ticket stubs, that sort of stuff. It’s part natural inclination and part a result of a very severe case of post-traumatic stress disorder I developed as a teenager: though I have a super specific memory for things like dates or the exact phrasing of a comment, I get swaths of chronological time wrong in hindsight and lose whole days dissociating. I often need to piece reality together and have adapted habits to make it quicker.
My husband’s big brother J.R. killed himself. My husband usually has a more accurate memory than I do, but they can be vague when addressing details of their worst traumas, a trait I absolutely do not share or relate to. Early in our relationship it infuriated me, and it’s been a lesson in patience to learn slowly. Despite now knowing the story of J.R.’s death, knowing where my husband was standing the moment they heard, a few months back I realized I didn’t know the actual date it happened. Which led me to realize I didn’t know his birthday, either.
My best friend and I are what you might consider amateur thanatologists, which means that we study death and dying, and spend a lot of time discussing it. I’m not more comfortable with death than the average person, I don’t think, but I am quite comfortable talking about it. I am fascinated by and mostly accept it. We had animals when I was growing up and my mother has told me it was in part for a kind of healthy practice with mortality: you love something with your whole heart, you hurt like hell when it goes, and someday you are grateful for that love despite its loss. And you know you will live through the loss until gratitude. I believe we can love animals as deeply, if not sometimes more so, than we do human beings, and that our relationships with them can be as robust as our relationships to other human beings. The horse referenced in the poem was not only my close friend but the gateway and witness to much of my earliest freedom. He broke his knee galloping in a field while I was at a friend’s party and had to be put down; my mother picked me up from the party halfway through and brought me to say goodbye. Though she’s agonized over whether it was the right decision, though I can remember the sound his body made hitting the ground like it was yesterday, I would not trade my opportunity to reassure him of my love for anything.
I don’t know what about scrolling to J.R’s most recent posthumous birthday on Facebook made me think of cantering on Merlin’s back through those alfalfa fields of my childhood. I can picture him in a purple heaven, maybe, or maybe heaven is the memory place where we get to talk to the person the person we love misses the most. J.R. has been described to me as many things, but common among them is a sense of tremendous scale—a flair for the dramatic, a wide open heart. Inescapable pain. I recognize him in my husband and I recognize him in parts of why my husband chose me as a life partner and I am honored and I am reaching for him the best way I know how, which is on the page in a made up horizonless place where I can recount for him a piece of my own sadness to warrant my attempt at understanding his. I wanted to reassure him it’s okay, that I accept it, that my husband loves him with their whole heart and hurts like hell that he is gone and is grateful for that love despite its loss. That I am grateful for his love, too, and I hope he has escaped what he ran from. I hope he knows he was and is wanted. And I will keep his brother safe.
Assistant Editor Sofia Fey on “Cotton”:
This poem by c m taylor was a must for me in Issue 30. It navigates, seamlessly, through a difficult emotional terrain. One of loving without the physicality of even an introductory handshake. Of loving through someone else. It illustrates how people can be connected tethers of care—of how if we love someone enough, we love who they love too. This poem is a pleasure to read, and one that will come to me again and again in my headspace.