Going There
Margo Wheaton
Tom Howard/Margaret Reid Poetry Contest 2025 (view all the winners)
Honorable Mention, Tom Howard, Poetry
For my son
Five years later and still, I have
not left that night. Even now, I can feel
the heave of your body as you try to climb
over the balcony rail. Let me go I want to go
you rasp, trying to scale the empty air,
the singularity of your will like a jockey's
reaching into the finish line. In this sudden
race, I'm an obstacle to clear, my arms
clamped around your chest like a harness.
If you go I'm going with you I swear, a fistful
of soggy t-shirt clutched in one hand as we wrestle
beneath the continuing stars. Always,
I'd managed to overtake you: pry your fingers
from the prescription bottle, make you sheepishly
lay the scissors down. But this time, there was no
hesitancy: you'd aligned yourself with a single point
and were flying towards it just as you tunneled
through me before and my body remembered
the force of that will, had been its vehicle. When
my feet started to skid as your body gathered weight
and you'd levered yourself almost over, I did the only
thing I could think of: Stop! It's hurting! My heart! My heart!
and felt you pause, divided by your loyalty to me.
In that moment, I hauled you back inside
where you collapsed on the living room floor,
then I blocked the door: your passage to that other
world without light. All night,
I hovered near its threshold to keep you
from trying to birth yourself there.
This poem was previously published as a pamphlet by Annick MacAskill in 2024.
