Jessie Petrow-Cohen

Splitting

You left me crepe myrtles,
red, in June. Your skin turned to paper. I crumpled it into balls  
and stuffed it in my socks. Until we burned them, your ears
were in my pocket. Right? Left. Now, the trees
won’t stop splitting. Everywhere they bloom
before they fall. You made a sound
when you swallowed. A hiccup. I store it
in my chest. My favorite part of grief
happened in a bedroom. The crepe myrtle
was redder than yesterday. You were paper
wrapped in pale fabric. A friend
keeps a list of surprises. Mama,

I had counted each one
of your toes.
Eleven.

Jessie Petrow-Cohen is a Pushcart Prize winning writer. She was selected by Melissa Febos as the winner of The Kenyon Review’s Short Nonfiction Contest and by Brian Turner as the winner of The Indiana Review’s Half K Prize. She was also a finalist for the Annie Dillard Award in Creative Nonfiction and American Short Fiction’s Halifax Ranch Prize. Her work has appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, Brevity, Waxwing, The Common, Bellingham Review, and elsewhere. She is the recipient of a Peter Taylor Fellowship at the Kenyon Review and has received support from the Vermont Studio Center, Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, and Ragdale Residency.