Winner of The Letter Review Prize for Poetry
To His Mother
Alexei Navalny, (June 4, 1976— February 16, 2024)
The tidal forces as you enter a black hole
and approach the singularity would tear you apart.
And also space and time. It is a small thing
to be a mother, a heavy, small thing.
To be a body, full and warm and wrapped
around the sound of your child’s voice,
his thoughts, laughter
and the bullets not yet fired, violence not yet spent,
but coming,
blood, all possible endings
fingered by her body in silence, embroidered
with empty eyes,
set aside for the time when it will happen —
you must be prepared —
and when it happens
she comes immediately, in the silence,
to collect her son’s body,
and it must have felt as if she were asking
for her own body back,
standing in the dust,
night after night, watching the dark
move across the arctic plain — were there stars?
It’s a small thing to be a mother,
to be thrown into the heart of a black hole,
to become a singularity,
infinitely small, infinitely heavy.
Virginia Sullivan lives in Western Massachusetts, designs children’s environments and has documented for teachers in her book, Lens on Outdoor Learning, how children learn in nature. She has published in the Arkansas Review, Beyond Words, The Naugatuck River Review, among others. She is currently working on a memoir in the form of a chapbook.