The poem explores the tension of early motherhood—the idea that to love something is to make it mortal and that this mortality carries an inevitable loss. I aimed to balance that sense of dread with tenderness, turning to the natural world for what is both beautiful and unbearably fragile.
Christine Degenaars has work published in Rattle, Tar River Poetry, Epiphany, Cider Press Review, and elsewhere. She was nominated for the 2023 Pushcart Prize, and in 2022 was selected as a semi-finalist in the 92Y Discovery Poetry Contest. She graduated from Hunter College with a Master of Fine Arts in Poetry. Thin Glass, her debut collection, will be published by Fernwood Press in 2025. She lives in New York.
