Originally Posted by VEGANGELICA

I've been getting into writing sonnets again and recently read and was impressed by the following sonnet, "Coming to Terms," by Catherine Chandler.

Crafted very well, her sonnet describes the somber subject matter with delicacy and immediacy so that the painful loss feels very real to me. I remember those elastic belly panel pants and all the nightmares I had about my unborn baby dying. I'm so glad none of them came true, and so sad that people's worst nightmares sometimes do:

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Coming to Terms -- by Catherine Chandler

I put aside my white smocked cotton blouse,
the pants with the elastic belly panel.
The only music in the empty house
strains from a distant country western channel.
My breasts are weeping. I’ve been given leave —
a week in which to heal and convalesce.
I peel away the ceiling stars, unweave
the year I’d entered on your christening dress.
I rearrange my premises — perverse
assumptions! — gather unripe figs; throw out
the bloodied bedclothes; scour the universe
in search of you. And God. And go about
my business, as my crooked smile displays
the artful look of ordinary days.

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