May, 2024

It is the month the thirteen-year and seventeen-year cycles synchronize. Cicada broods XIII and XIX co-emerge from the ground for the first time in 221 years. Seven states across the Midwest and Southeast will reverberate with cicada song until mid-June, when the mothers lay their eggs on the ends of tree branches. The newly minted nymphs hatch one month later. They chew through the branches, free-fall to the roots, feast on sap, then follow their ancestral path down deep into the earth: to burrow, incubate, wait. Jupiter enters Gemini for the first time in twelve years. Rafah is on fire. I rage, make calls, watch the videos to the end until my cheeks burn, knowing it is both the most and the least I can do. She gets her first loose tooth. He gets his first pimple. It is the month I see my mother look genuinely happy in a photo for the first time. When the largest solar storm since 2003 erupts above us. We wake the kids at midnight, run down to the riverbank— pajamas and bare feet— to gawk at the aurora. They are hard to see with the naked eye, but strangely brilliant through my iPhone’s lens: pink, green, gold. We visit the Field Museum in Chicago. We sit on a bench in front of Sue, the world’s largest fully intact T-rex fossil. She dominates an entire wing of the top floor. We stare silently for thirty minutes, then hold up photos of chicken skeletons, then human skeletons, comparing them to Sue’s. None are wildly different from the other. We wonder if apex predators get a bad rap. In a quiet corner of the museum’s basement we see a mummy with our own eyes. She is smaller than I anticipated, not much bigger than a large child. I fall in love with the wide gold wings gilding her chest, glinting in the late afternoon light. I wonder how her afterlife is going. And whether it is disgust or fascination rippling through my belly when I see her partially exposed Maxilla. On a sunny Tuesday at the Shedd Aquarium I pet a stingray with my bare hands. Its skin is impossibly smooth. Tears spring unexpectedly when I see the white beluga whales somersault through the blue water. And again when I realize: my boy is crying too. We gather three generations of relatives for a family reunion in rural Illinois. Forty of us emerge from both coasts. We swarm the platform at my uncle’s tiny church. We sing How Great Thou Art for the local congregation of twenty-three souls. We learn our great-great-grandmother used to sneak cigarettes and magazines. I get called a cheater during trivia. We debate parenting philosophies with the cousins. Then we fly home. It is the month I start taking voice lessons again. The month I sit in the clinic every week, IV in my left arm, as iron is pumped back into my watery blood. It is the month I remember I love sex. The month I bleed with the full moon. I hear that makes me a red witch. It is not the month we finish construction on our house. But it is the month my brother— intrepid archaeologist— hauls away 2,500 pounds of trash and debris, unearthing, presenting: the yard. The yard where my mother plants flowers. Where my sister hangs window boxes. Where we gather on Mother’s Day with old and new loves. And my Beloveds? She moves back to the Rockies and prepares to give birth again— this time at forty-five— weeks after her eldest returns home from college. The cycle begins again. My Love up north marks both her parents’ passings: mother ten years ago, father this time last year. She schedules the surgery. She makes herself a promise. My Dear One hears a story stir deep underground— a story buried with him after the car accident in 2000. She sings it back to the surface with the cicadas. Sings it with her whole chest for the people, to the cameras. Then sings him back to sleep so he can finally rest. He and I see a prick of light pierce our familiar dark. We realize maybe we have been in a tunnel all along— dark inside what is, in fact, a swelling cocoon, not a tomb, not the bottom of a well as we feared. We begin to imagine in earnest what it would be to emerge from survival into something more sustainable, more vibrant— something we recognize, something we love. It is the month I uncover ancient runes embedded in my body: fossils, relics, imprints of abuser and abused I must exhume and alchemize. And I do— into gold shimmering in my veins like the Nile or Thames when the light hits just right. May is the month my nine-year-old— blood of my blood— takes my hand unprompted as we walk through the park. The month my five-year-old— bone of my bone— falls asleep on my chest, her head heavy on my sternum, feet reaching all the way to the center of my tibias. (How?) It is the month I realize human ashes, viewed under a microscope, are indistinguishable from nebulae seen through a telescope. The month the nymph surrenders. The mother emerges. The month I finally wade out into the river, offering my exhausted attempts at control— my pretense, my projections, denials, fantasies, and waning light— to her swift current. At least for today. It is the month hope returns. The month I wonder if I can write a poem. By Abby Buchanan (2024)