SOPHIE MCMILLAN - POEMS

Sophie McMillan is an American expat currently living in Glasgow, Scotland with her husband and 15-month old son. A published poet, she divides her time between writing, chasing down peer reviewers for her academic journal day job, or out in the field undertaking conflict archaeology.

​The Trees Out My Kitchen Window

Through my grimy kitchen window, 
I see the signs of a new spring in the back garden below.

Pairs of magpies dart and dive, 
pecking at the trash left behind by other, more careless tenants.

But it is the budding trees, the ones with the white flowers, 
that my gaze always wonders back to.

I do not know what the name of the tree is, 
neither in Latin or laymen.

This is our second and last spring in the new Gorbals;
our first flat together will soon be abandoned for our first house together.

In this flat, we experienced old death and new life;
it has seen our family simultaneously grow and shrink and grow again. 

I will not miss this flat, but I do not leave this flat with a heavy heart
And I know that, come spring, I will always think of those flowering white trees when standing at my kitchen window.

​

With My Own Grief
​

So much of who we are and how we are judged is on display in the public space.
Our social media accounts allow the almost unlimited access of others into our private words of likes, interests, and 3am thoughts.
There is a digital mask, of course, one that hides some of the real truth while exposing much that we assumed to be cleverly concealed.
In this world, news, whether true, fake, or somewhere in between, is shared instantly and often passed along without thought.

My mother died last Wednesday morning.
It was a phone call I knew was coming, expected with dread, and yet was completely unprepared for.
At eight months pregnant and an ocean away, my last conversation with her had been through a mobile screen, a bittersweet blessing.
I admit to being relieved; the agony of her decline and the hellish limbo of ‘when’ was finally over for us both.
But that doesn’t mean that I was prepared for the void of her absence.

A week before her death I had to post a message on social media; I hadn’t wanted to.
Her friends, full of good intentions and honest sorrow, had caught the public attention and people were looking to me, her only child, to explain.

My mother’s illness came fast and sudden; neither of us thought to make her diagnosis public because it wasn’t for the public to digest.
But her death became this quasi-spectacle and me its reluctant ringmaster.
I had to post about her death, it was the easiest way to alert the ever-hungry public realm.
Now my inbox is filled with condolences, memories, advice, and prayers from people I know and don’t know alike.
Again, with their good intentions and own honest sorrow, people have turned to me to help process their loss: her absence.
I want to help them.
After all, that is how my mother raised me.
But I am the one suddenly without a mother, the one suddenly in a world where the person whose advice I sought most and who I had known the longest didn’t exist.

They say I am strong and she would be so proud.

My own grief is released in private, in the shower, when I’m alone in bed, and when no one else is there to see my heartbreak.
My own grief is never for public consumption.

​Amazing

When I tell people about you and try to describe to them what you mean to me, I use the word amazing, but regardless of how many times I repeat it, it doesn’t fit you well at all, for you are so much more than simply amazing.

• You are the colors of the leaves as they fall from the trees in the cool New England haze of autumn
  
• You are the first sip of coffee enjoyed on a wrap-around porch
  
• You are the sound of rain on a tin roof in the darkness of the night
  
• You are the warmth of a fireplace that I sit before as I read
  
• You are that rush of absolute joy that is felt when seeing someone waiting to greet you at the airport
  
• You are my flight of fancy when I’m sunbathing on the beach
  
• You are the sigh of delight released when sliding into sheets fresh from the dryer
  
• You are the satisfaction of that first bite of pizza that was craved all day
  

So, you see then, how inadequate ‘amazing’ is as a descriptor for you.  You are so much more, and no amount of words could ever truly convey how I feel.  And so I settle and smile and say “he is amazing.”

​

​Jawline

Smoking weed with the Gypsy Queen,
At the corner of Rotten Row and Cathedral Square.
Your skin tells a story of traveling carnivals and long nights with loud music.
A damaged soul with stamps on a passport to the world of anywhere,
You trapped your heart of gold in a chastity belt of steel while your knight-in-iron-armor is on another quest.
Sharp edges and hard angles are the curves to your body.
Hardcore sunflower whose head can droop so low,
You’re an empress in a field of dandelions,
They will mimic and they will mock, but they will remain weeds.
That horizon you see, just over that gravestone, is a life full of possibility.
Your life is on pause just before that killer beat drops,
And you hesitate to hit play out of fear that it won’t live up to your expectations,
But you have memorials of your own to make,
And a plane to Vietnam to catch to honor those who remain covered and unheard.
So light another joint and take a deep breath,
Say good bye to the queen and leave a coin for her time,
You got this, jawline, so take that next step.

​