Gnashing and gnawing at my innards Viscera shredded; trauma tombs embedded Stitch in bells, weigh down the nauseating flapping Jangle a euphonious jingle Steady placement of chinked shield Conceal agonies.
U-bend blocked There my guilt brims Shame for wishing away rapid cell division Liquor and voluntary scalding Natures way away Life folding poured out Out of Order; terror of disorder
For two, a freshly dug hole The morning after Mourning follows Nipping at heals with the snow A hollow in another garden There, a piece of my heart lays A depression for my first’s succession
She wants to see my torment on display To harvest in morbid grief games Pretend she’s just the same Catfish loss-mother Conspiring tiring Yearning to reap from the suffering leaks of my soul Observe my lamentations trapped in a fishbowl To don a cape, be in control Prodding my wounds, infecting
Imitation empath storing stories Catalogued, indexed, held hostage Latching of grief vampires Sucking ephemeral life’s marrow Chipping stones off my bones
An archaeologist scraping the shovel No delicate brushing of bristles Attention desperation Desecrating my pain Self-appointed steward on my cradles grave.
Rolling rumbling tumbling of the muscle Steadfast working out the dead
Waiting through waves Expulsion from womb to world; inner-outer dimension switch
Existence given visibility Life unviable; dead tangible
The ticking clock veiled agony; pulse-quickening within the neck Swimming through minutes in viscous shards; stark, exposed in wait
A sudden burst to cemetery-serene-silence Shock of expectations met, tension swells and pops within the void
Her body expelled, revealed Limp, still, disturbingly perfect
Few eyes lay upon her — none with such desperate thirst as the child-loss-mother Tattooing details to memory Cerebral and uterine imprints Memories outlived instantaneously
Tiny fingers, toes, torso, fused eyes, jaw, ears… All except the beating of the heart Virgin lungs void of air in this, her death hours stare
My pathetic heart beats so hard it chokes the throat The muscle has pried itself from within its cage, making way up to swell in the gullet
Don’t take her away… Emotion sickness swells drowning from the inside Even dead, she’s still the baby; even dead, she’s my baby, still
Must give her honour of life…somehow Gemini mother; creator, reluctant reaper
Now her death feeds life Entangled in root tendrils within the earth Forever reaching within and upward
The true heart of something that doesn’t have to beat Her cycles visibly viable
Bleary eyes can’t always see their praise of stars Despair wracked the heart for a time
Peace isn’t only for the dead…
She sways in the wind now; dancing grace Energy shared, scattered through leaves and bellies of beasts She worms and she soars through them
Not the life imagined; energy shifted, realigned Heart-wrenching, gut-punching beautiful
This picture doesn’t look real… Like there’s a filter; to enhance, to hide, deceive the eye. Shielding a painful reality; it was a painful reality. The mind, like the camera, does this all on its own. This picture doesn’t look real… A reflection of how it felt; a blue hue, a hazy dream. Everything thrown out of balance. A reality that swallowed you up, yet one that could barely be touched. Spinning lost through electrical sparks. A new reality at the edge of everything. At the edge of all the mattered and all that didn’t. A steady calm or frozen panic; so close to the same. Something else on the edge; the blurred borderline where the unreal is real.
The breeze wafted through the thick deep orange curtains. Bathing the drab third floor flat. Manky midden air from the rising summer heat mingled with the rising damp of the crumbling tenement walls. A fresh lick of paint only tricked the eyes. Festering rot just beneath that thin surface. Gemma sat in the corner of the living room, face blotchy red in desperate tears. Huddled into her baby wrapped in his pale blue teddy blanket. Dead. Still. Rocking back and forth quietly sobbing; “I just needed you to stop screaming, just for a minute.”
“You can wake up now, Teddy…”
(C) Natasha Sinclair 2019.
Previously published by Writingwriters.net for Drabble #5
