For Seasons

Traci Cox

 

There is a space in grief that hollows you out.

It might be cheekbones, eyes, gut. Maybe your mouth; grief will take your words, or your will, from you without asking. You are insatiable, or stuffed, or vacuous; whatever fills or empties you takes up all hours of the day. You will forever miss the one that hovers in a shadowbox of your own making.

In autumn I scooped out the guts of an uneven, bulbous pumpkin, seeds and tethers and all, and flung them into a plastic bag. I scooped so hard I pierced its shell, creating a hole where a hole was not meant to be.

In winter I hung white lights on the crooked awning of a chipped white painted porch. The front of my house reminded me of me at one time: pubescent, a bucktoothed, freckled teen. She took a picture of me there, once.

In spring I planted the same flowers and herbs I had tattooed on my left arm, in honor of my dead mother’s garden—peonies and roses, lavender and sage. She used to burn scented candles in our home that left smudge marks on the kitchen walls. My dad complained about the smoke, the smell. The residue her touch left behind.

Summer—the season that is supposed to be the antithesis of hollow: swollen, full, hot and oiled and heavier than I prefer. Humidity weighs on my skin and I sweat too much, repel too much. I miss the bumpy knuckles of cold known hands. A time of eating too much, sleeping too much; staying inside. Premature darkness: I crave that.

Seasons change, and I embrace the unfurling of flannel sheets and a call towards a comfort I cannot name. I remember my mother. I remember her always, but that tangible turning of time and of clocks winding back pulls me to the memory of the morning she died. That day, a toothy grapefruit spoon reached into my soul fruit and dug out all the pulp. As a child, she served it to me with sugar on top.

In my house, now—in my grief—I eat that puckered carved sweet-sour fruit year round.

 

Traci Cox is a Ph.D. candidate in English/Creative Writing at the University of Missouri-Columbia. Her nonfiction has appeared in publications such as The Masters Review, So to Speak, and Madison Magazine, and she has a notable essay in “The Best American Essays 2014.” Traci is a Fulbright Fellow (Slovakia, 2009-10) and holds an MFA from George Mason University. She serves as Audio Editor at The Missouri Review.