allisa cherry / poem

Grief at Mudra Massage and Wellness

I am deep in my body. I am doing fine.

Envisioning myself as points of light 

shining against the massage therapist’s hands

until she asks me to roll over and I feel

the extra skin of my belly–a reminder 

of the only time I carried a pregnancy 

all the way to term–lag heavily. I can’t 

recall an instance that I’ve cried 

on my stomach or curled up on my side. 

But place me supine–undefended–

and I become a culvert for sorrow. 

Which is why I always choose Child’s Pose 

over Corpse Pose as my aging body settles 

at the end of each yoga flow. In the labor

and delivery room, in the middle of a contraction, 

a nurse once asked me if I wanted a mirror 

to see the crowning head of my daughter 

as she arrived–irreversibly–into my life. 

I was fully dilated–a startled eye–my whole body 

engaged in the act of seeing. So I declined. 

I wanted to kneel when I gave birth. 

I wanted to feel less exposed. But the doctor 

had me on my back in stirrups and I was too afraid 

to say something. For three days after my mother’s death

I brought my daughter each time I sat with her body. 

I imagined myself as a lion guarding her bareness, 

guarding her ribs, belly, breasts thinly sheeted 

beneath strip lighting in a room kept cool 

to slow decomposition. Ridiculous. A lion 

wearing a borrowed coat in Minnesota 

in the dead of winter. My mother

would’ve been terrified to be exposed like that.

So, I guarded her the way she once guarded me

while I struggled on my back to give birth.

There are shadows to this grief that I have been 

avoiding. How my mother died before I finally

beheld her. How I too will likely die 

without meeting my own body's long gaze.

But here in this wellness center, the therapist’s hands 

catechize my flesh to learn what I keep

hidden there. And if my body tells her

that I was a terrible daughter–impatient, 

slutty–she doesn’t let on. And if my body

tells her that it hopes one day to be buried

on its side so at least some part of me

can finally be hidden from the unblinking

eye of God, I only guess by the way she tugs 

the white sheet up to my collar bone, 

tucks it between my arm and my breast. 

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Allisa Cherry is the author of An Exodus of Sparks (Michigan State University Press) and the 2024 recipient of the Wheelbarrow Books poetry prize (RCAH Center for Poetry). Her work has appeared in journals such as The McNeese Review, TriQuarterly, and The Penn Review. She currently lives in Oregon where she teaches workshops for immigrants and refugees transitioning to a life in the U.S. and serves as a poetry editor for West Trade Review.