issue 26 > poetry > raphael
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Women Who Have Lost Children
by Carolyn Raphael
dress in colored mourning clothes,
choosing the patterns of despair
or camouflage in beige and gray.
The bold ones wrap themselves in scarlet
to throw a stranger off the track.
Some hide on birthdays, lighting candles
that disseminate the dark.
Some do good works and hope to thaw.
Those with appetite chew laughter,
sweet but indigestible.
The fragile ones, who never surface,
bear the day, expel the night,
and wake each morning to a funeral.