How to Grieve

by Cristi Donoso Best

in the lambing shed

 

Tongue salted, belly
full of battered fish

Smell the wet, fallow earth
as you come near the sign

In blue: Hold a Baby Lamb, 3 euro

Hear its rustling in the straw
as you offer up your coins

Know the weight of it,
its docile silence in your arms,

That sound will follow you home.
Listen for it. Wonder

if silence is empty or just full
of possibility.

Find a bit of wool, sometimes
still, on the raw edge of a sleeve

Cristi Donoso Best (@cristideebee) is an Ecuadorian-American writer and MFA candidate at American University. Her work has been published in The Threepenny Review, Motherly, and other online journals. Find more of her work at cristidonoso.com.

 

Photography by: Maranda Vandergriff