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Board Administrator Username: mjm Post Number: 4379 Registered: 11-1998 |
Honorable Mention We Labor Both in Life and Death Treezaa (T.E. Ballard) The baby is dead we know this before we begin and here is the irony it does not matter. There is a hollow, a small curve of spine, a place which only exists when a woman gives birth. The midwife claims if I press into the bone, my sister feels less pain. I tell stories between contractions, stories of two sisters with no rhyme or meter. We are a game and my words keep her safe. My hands are too hot. I place them in ice till they burn lay them on my nephew’s grave. Yes, my sister says keep your fingers there. Devon is born like the baby rabbit we saved as children, his white fur turning blue on our skin. Here is the place where no poem exists, where I say he is beautiful because he is hers and I touch fingers, toes, make prints in a book. And then he turns to death and I pray no longer for life but for the one moment I can walk away. |
