writing therapy – Clan Witch & Word Refinery

One for Sorrow

I’ve been seeing them for months in fours

Fanned feathers

Celestial blues, flanked with obsidian rainbows—

Four for a boy.

Three days ago,

Three didn’t show.

One flew solo—

One for sorrow.

Yesterday and today, the same—

One for sorrow.

Another silent death inside the chalice of life.

Mother of death—another passes beatless.

At least he will, soon.

It could be hours, days, weeks away.

One for sorrow.

He has no clock,

Only mine ticks on.

Until then, I wait.

Holding the silence within—

The growing void

Of his deathbed.

His roof collapsing from

The haematoma down.

I select a tree, a burial site,

A square I knitted nine years ago,

His teddy.

I consider the name that will be whispered when he slips from my body into my palms,

And my eyes drink his flesh in for the first and final time.

One for Sorrow.

I’m birthing death—

Not for the first time.

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

Death Born Still — Lives