Poem of the Week | August 04, 2025

“object permanence” by Lo Naylor is our Poem of the Week.

Lo Naylor (she/they) is a poet and filmmaker from Utah currently living in France. Lo recently earned an MFA in poetry from NYU’s Writers Workshop in Paris and holds a BA from Columbia University in art history and visual arts. Her poetry has been supported by the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference and is forthcoming in The Adroit Journal, Alaska Quarterly Review, and Narrative.

object permanence

the baby is trying to understand
when I hide behind the pillow, it doesn’t mean
I’m gone for good.

there are other games like this.
she must wait for the ball
she slots in the chute

to drop into the box
at the bottom. this winter
they put my sister in a cardboard coffin

someone slid into an oven
& what came out
fit into a small box.

the day after she was found,
I left the baby for the first time.
I sat in an aluminum tube

barreling through the air
& landed next to the Great Salt Lake—
it wasn’t illogical

to expect I’d find my sister there.
still, I refused to see her.
a friend said seeing the body can help you

accept the permanence of death—
yet breath can be so subtle,
I might have to use my hand or cheek to check.

back home, I go straight to the crib,
rest my palm on the tiny body inside—
a nearly imperceptible expansion.

a nearly unbearable expansion in me.
what is it?
the little fists punch the air.

the eyes open—a face
of disbelief on the return of mother.
how terrible

to be a creature that doesn’t know
if the disappeared carry on out of sight,
may one day materialize—

Author’s Note

This poem began as an act of witness: seeing my baby’s startled face. I’d been away for the first meaningful stretch of time just as she was entering the development phase where infants learn objects or people can continue existing even when no longer seen or heard. As she was grasping my “permanence,” I was struggling to accept my sister’s own impermanence following her death by suicide. This dissonance was not lost on me—although I lacked the language to make meaning of it. Five years later, after finding poetry, I returned to this time, curious to see if it might lead me to a poem. I wrote toward that surprised expression, unconsciously using defamiliarization to replicate the speaker’s disorientation—and objects (the game, the plane, the oven) to communicate the uncanny parallels. The baby’s rising chest led to words that can hold (I hope!) the unsettling blend of love and fear inherent in deep attachment. The poem’s final merging of the speaker’s and the baby’s uncertainty surprised me—and that’s what I seek in my work: to be surprised by where I land.

If you enjoyed this poem and want to read more, check out the Missouri Review’s Poem of the Week collection.