spring's baby

a poem about spring and how it took me apart.

happy spring! here’s an older poem of mine that was published last year by Wild Roof Journal. check out the issue here!

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some context— the summer of 2024 to the spring of 2025 was my first year post acquiring memory-loss from ECT treatments. it was also the year most potent with my amnesia. during this time i discovered that my remembrance of the seasons, too, had been affected:

the way they tumbled into the other, embracing each other quickly before letting go. how the air clung to my skin more desperately early summer. how the sun-risen cold tugged at my ears first, then my neck and nose. the color palettes changing so imperceptibly i felt under some spell. i was a newborn, filled with nothing past the intuition that these were the divine methods the earth operated under. of course i knew of the seasons. i had just forgotten the how and why.

this was what i wrote upon entering the first spring.

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it’s a new month and I mean a new month. waking up nine months prior, unremembering
of life, I feel newly acquainted with April this unimposing Tuesday. I’m seeing tulips,

bright colors grayed behind brittle frost warm animal bodies conceiving, human included a mouth of a green rubber snake hose given

permission to wail there’s sunlight when I wake, when I get ready for bed the scent of clean laundry in the yard, like the detergent bottle had

promised mud squelched between toes because open-toed slips-ons were too impatient
to be worn a swimming pool, still cold, hosting pool parties for reject leaves and

insects, some already floating drunk every direction wet. the clouds crying, as well

the sprinklers, and humidity too, while hugging its arms around the sliding door
a death’s burial if I were to guess caught in all this soil, I’m new to April’s customs

all births and deaths, I get why girls are named April it is significant, the wrap-
around a life and its unbecoming the zodiac wheel begins its life cycle

in Aries, blossoming anger shade-matching the tulips a temper that will be soothed by Cancer’s summertime a fruit in palm, a fruit

in tongue, foliage pressed to lips’ seam oh and how could I forget the bumblebees and hummingbirds, bumbling and humming honest to their

titles zipping open my skin jacket, hoping enough of them will enter and I’ll rise from the ground, fly like fae, I’ve heard they travel out here in the Spring and beams beams

beams every degree that I’m turned, hurricaning
around me, spooling golden honey I am sticky with perspiration and sweet with

my baby hairs curled inwards, mahogany rollie pollies I must meet this nest’s architect
to compliment designs I see now why daughters are named after April, it is so easy

to be taken by this world I reach across acres, mirror image, irises rolling baby
blue eggs, ears conducting trumpet calla lilies, hands webbing blushing

hibiscus, itchy pollen freckling, a tunnel for sunshine, a loudspeaker of crisp
frigid air when I woke up nine months ago, I didn’t forget my name.

I’d like to change it now, though this seems not unlike an infatuation tattooed cursive
on a collarbone

if that may be, I’ll swallow regret gladly and tell the curious a day-long tale,
call it spring’s baby

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this was one of the first poems of mine accepted into publication so while it is not my favorite ever it is still quite special to me! i know it’s not april yet but i thought the spring equinox just passing was fitting. let me know your thoughts if you have any.

also, sorry for kinda being mia (if you happened to notice). grad application cycle is finally coming to an end for me and it has been immensely stressful to say the least. i have been going through reoccurring bouts of doom and despair as i think about my future and mercury being in retrograde was definitely not helping (anyone else have the most emotionally brutal past few weeks??).

anyways, i hope you all are doing well and taking care of yourselves the best you can. hopefully we’ll chat soon.

-sofi <3

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buy me a coffee! — if you’d like to support in another way! my hope is to write full-time, but unfortunately i’m not a nepo baby and therefore do not have the financial backing to support this dream currently. sending a virtual forehead kiss to anyone who’s able to contribute <3

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