The Separation
Before they pulled her wet-slicked being
from my numbed body, they prepped us
we may not hear her cry.
Minutes before, her heart rate dived
to a faint tap & her 3lb body
had stopped moving.
No matter if I had changed position,
sipped chilled water, or however deep
they dug the ultrasound wand into me;
her life-filled body had become lifeless.
As my body rocked back &
forth like a swing in the wind, they carved
through 7 layers of my body.
I shivered from the coldness of metal tools
slicing thick tissue & the nurse to my right
gabbled everything they were doing, reasons why, &
I couldn’t hear a thing. Only thoughts of how
my 7-month-old baby that had grown a part of me
may not scream, cry, feel, or be alive.
My husband rested his hand on my hairnet
& soon we heard little bleats, a wet lamb
dropped in a pasture left to survive.
In a moment, we became two entities
left to laugh, wail, & feel the world’s aches
separate.
Social Worker Questions
The night I was dying
my eyes were swollen shut as
the hospital bed’s sheets
were changed repeatedly
from being soaked
in my urine & vomit.
The night I was dying
my nurse cradled my body
& held me, rocking me
in her chest as I cupped
my pregnant belly.
I didn’t die that night.
Although white lab coats
scampered around my limp
frame like field mice.
Low voices hummed as if it were a secret
my body was shutting down.
Turning off the lights in each room
one at a time.
A month & a half later
in the NICU while holding my 3.5-pound
baby, a woman with a rusted-clamp clipboard
nattered about the weather, specifically the wind & gloom
as I had spent 4 hours in a room with no windows
holding the shell that was my baby.
Finally, she fumbled about what she was there to ask:
How was I processing my near-death
experience & traumatic birth?
I didn’t know.
Just like I didn’t know how many
ounces I had pumped alone, & baby-less
being told to look at a photo of my daughter
in an incubator to try to squeeze
out more drops of milk.
I didn’t know the last time I had brushed
my teeth or if my stitches had dissolved.
I didn’t know when my baby would
or could ever breathe on her own.
I didn’t know how I had spent days
in sterile hospital sheets & was expected to go home
without my baby & act as if the story were the same
because we had both lived.
How do I explain, all I did was spin
around the idea that the only thing I had ever grown
had stopped moving the day I was dying?
Swollen Marble Eyes
There was a high
likelihood she would be still-
born. Still, her heart
continued to whisper
as her body stopped moving
& my heart exploded.
I didn’t cradle her to my freckled
chest or touch her for over 24 hours.
In the panic of the room,
doctors didn’t announce her sex
until a nurse asked
a few minutes later, she wiggled
on a cart, small chirps as
she was intubated.
Eyes swollen marbles, unopened
with blonde wisps of hair, a dream
I had never seen. Her red, wrinkled
limbs stayed in her plastic box,
with IV ports infused through toothpick arms
& purple-cut umbilical cord.
We’d visit her at night, when the NICU
daily rumbles were silent except
for the monitor beeps. Put our 3 minute
freshly washed hands into the box’s
cut-out holes, room oxygen seeping out.
We rubbed her translucent skin
we never thought we would see
& forgot the ruckus
of the outside world.
It’s funny what people will say & do to relate to one another
Her purple-hued legs, as long as my fingers
& the tubes that ran throughout her body
were as thick as her pine-needle arms.
When you explain to people
your baby is in the NICU, they never know what to say.
Prattle about a baby they once knew
who survived or read about
in a Facebook post. They preach phrases like normal,
you’d never know, even graduated early, or
only had a hole in their heart to make you feel relieved.
Jostle, how lucky you are & how thankful
you should feel. Your baby will be fine, & these moments
will pass when you can’t hold her, feed her, bathe her,
touch her petal-thick skin that you once grew.
Curious people ask if her eyesight
will be okay & I wonder if oxygen
lines will snake through her nose forever.
Or pry if she will always be so tiny – can she catch up?
All I can think of is that because she was born
so young, she hadn’t learned the reflex of suckling
& swallowing. No matter how many breastfeeding articles I read,
it would never matter as a toothpick-sized orange
feeding tube winds through her nose for nearly 45 days.
It’s funny what people will say &
do to relate to one another.
When in the dark of night, while everyone rests
& IVs streak both of your arms, you cry
with no sound, so nurses or your husband don’t hear
because you should be thankful you survived.
She survived.
But your body feels empty
& your arms pine to hold her
foot-long body next to yours in rough
patterned hospital sheets.
Instead, in the quiet beeps of hospital rooms
you grieve the dreams you had
for your pregnancy, birth, & the beginning
days of her life.
Grief’s like heavy weights
tied to your feet as you learn to walk again,
shuffle one foot after another
to the NICU in the morning light.
Alien Buddha Press 