April One

For years, chronic illness stood between me and even the thought of pregnancy. During a brief and long-awaited bout of remission, I conceived, and that pregnancy was ectopic. Only hours after the heartbeat was confirmed, the pregnancy was ended.

In the moments between beginning and end, I picked a sprig of blossoms from my tree to honor what almost was. I pressed those blossoms and printed them twice, one over the other: first as a cyanotype, then as an anthotype.

The cyanotype records absence, and the anthotype records presence. Held jointly, they represent how it may feel to carry something, be it hope, a wish, or a pregnancy, and to lose it in nearly the same instant.

Like the layered prints, the poetry carries multiple sentiments when read vertically or across, just as hope and grief ran side by side for me that spring. Together, the work explores having, lacking, and the knowing of it, experienced simultaneously.