I recently noticed that my lips quiver badly when I’m anxious and I wondered why, so I followed that thought process back to this specific memory from my childhood. While writing, I found that the poem became less about the memory itself and more about dissecting what it means for me today. Being able to trace such a distinct trait back to this moment left me feeling molten, a sour sickly apple festering in my gut; how can trauma and the people who have hurt us continue to affect our lives so deeply in ways we don’t even notice?

This informed a lot of the craft decisions, such as the first line. I intended to write more before it, but found that it reflected well the constant remembering of living with trauma, as well as how remembering trauma can often cause age regression back to the headspace of when it occurred. I also then intentionally wrote in simpler language to frame the poem in the mind of a child.

The biggest thing that intrigued me about this memory was the contrasts: the bright green lawns and the dead of morning, the nice, manicured lawns becoming deadly and imposing, the typical warmth of a summer day meeting the frigid cold. While I was writing I found that the cold water turned from an enemy to a friend, or at least an unlikely ally against the true monster lurking just above the surface.

The healing process takes a long time, years and years of feeling trapped and angry and scared and raw. But maybe through the remembering we can become stronger, taking the parts of ourselves we feel like were created without our control and piecing them together again to reclaim ourselves fully in the way we want.