Which Species on Earth is Saddest?

When we wake up in our bodies, first we weep.

We weep because the air is thick as honey.

Even the air is a body. Ours is the bottommost

and newest body, nested inside other, older ones

(though the mother’s body is repairing itself now;

there’s no trace of us anywhere on her;

why are we part of every body but our mother’s?)

Die as soon as possible, the Scriptures say.

And many do—or soon enough, as in the tales of

a swollen boy, now years ago, in farthest Africa,

who filled a grove of cherry trees with tears, then

vanished into the grove. He hides behind trees.

That’s death for you. Grief is a cherry grove.

Don’t be born at all. My friend is on fast-forward now

to reach the scene where they erase her childlessness.

She knows she hid that kid somewhere inside of her,

but where? We know nothing else except by learning:

not walking, not eating. Only to cry comes naturally.