Many Litters – poems by Emilia Lehvonen

I am here to save myself and some of my memories. Others I am here to drown like newborns without guilt. My uncle did that to my cousin’s puppies. I’ve heard you cannot bury your past and mostly that is correct. It is also a lie. You can always try and sometimes you owe yourself that. Therapy is too expensive and I have no stamina.

Once I was a child and our cat ate her bald misshapen babies not ready to live.
Other times they were born dead. All furry and slimy, we burned the small bodies on our balcony in a large funeral candle. The smoke thick. There was no disrespect. Questions from a window across the yard we couldn’t possibly comment on later that day.

This one time I remembered how we buried some small bodies in the edge of a land not big enough to be a forest. In our backyard roots and coniferous trees with anthills facing south. We stuck branches through the structure and sucked the sharp taste out. It was meant to be good for us

Much later, we went back digging and found nothing. Do not subject angel bones to a burial, to earth, to decomposition. Eaten away in front of our moving bodies, every day in silence. Years later, I reminded my partner in crime of this, she remembers nothing. But I am here now. Finally about to kick the door down. Some kittens were born and stayed alive.