Tuesday, November 4, 2008

When I Unraveled

When I Unraveled

How can I tell the truth? I did not want another pregnancy, another baby
tugging at tired breasts. Life slips away - self buries self with each child
I carry into the world. Yet, I carried him – sure that life brings purpose
with the bright stabbing beautiful pain. I carried him, pretended life
was only beautiful. But sickness invaded small cells and circulated

in blood, pushing life out of life I’d carried. Only then did I know my need
of him – blood of my blood. Flesh of my flesh. Oxygen and dripping antibiotics
bonded him to earth. I floated untethered, unraveling in the difference between being
and not being. Life became a bubble – iridescent and molecule thin.

He slept under blue lights, circulated sick blue blood, turned blue when air
was not rich enough for pale, weak lungs. I swallowed, ingested and engorged
myself on guilt and fear and extracted it from it prayerful, entreating balm to beg forgiveness and breathe hope into the gloaming. Life is bright
stabbing beautiful pain and I gashed my hand on its rim.


-cnb

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