☀ Today's Poem: "This Happens" Darius Atefat-Peckham

July 15, 2021

Darius Atefat Peckham

~for my second mother, Rachie

In dream, dreaming, I am
not terrified of my own death
but of yours. How

selfish. Iranians take special
interest in dream. In dream
my professor presses Farsi

into my mouth like gol,
refusing to take soil. It is not
prophecy, but everything

below. During one of my
father's readings, a woman
in the audience collapses as if

from sleep. He falters up
there, unsure if he
had caused this,

if he should continue.
When she wakes, moments later,
she is sobbing, but fine.

Don't worry, she says, this happens
all the time. How
incredible. To be struck with

sleep time and again like
a season. She is swaddled
by us, yet I still wish to be close

to her, for I have before risen
from that kind of sleep
to no one. Rising

from the tub as a boy, I'd
move too fast, swoon
as if with love, and collapse.

If my father hadn't heard
the soft body hit,
like a tamed animal

I'd rise, shakily,
alone. And, as if
from fear of monsters,

I'd run to you. Understand,
I was unafraid. But excited,
almost, for your concern. To be

embraced and alive. To be
held. How selfish. This
happens.

from the journal MICHIGAN QUARTERLY REVIEW

READ ABOUT TODAY'S POEM

Forward

My usual process is to begin with an image or idea of grief or joy and complicate it by reaching toward that equal, opposite, concurrent emotion. Generally I begin with something I've been preoccupied with for a while, something I've mulled over, and the poetics tend to take over from there. I've struggled to write about my relationship with my second mother, Rachie, for some time. How to write about something so purely good? Something so unexpected, yet so longed for? Something that's such a blessing you can (and can't) so terrifyingly imagine your life without it? Half-asleep, and missing Rachie at school, that wonderful feeling of being mothered, I wrote this little love poem and, just like our bond, it arrived almost all at once and as close to perfect as I could imagine.

Darius Atefat-Packham on "This Happens"

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