:: The S.I.C.L.E. Cell ::

:: Friday, July 01, 2005 ::

The missing is killing me lately. Especially at night when I turn out the light and have nothing but a canvas of black on which to paint obscenly lit images of despair and death.

I see his/her little hand flickering on the screen. I hear his/her heart beating on the doppler. I can't tell you. I can't tell you how I didn't know. I saw him/her. I loved him/her.

"I miss you I miss you I miss you..." I whisper into the darkness.

The utter loss keeps me so preoccupied that I never even have to touch the guilt. But I do. I abandoned my child completely... to death and dismemberment in a malevolent, steel-tooled eviction. And "sorry" is a fart that changes naught.

There it is in my mind's eye again. The preciousness of the moment just before. But you know... what's the point? I still can't rescue us. I go over and over, but I'm here; those alabastar forms are there. Fixed.

I will not wake up in those stirrups again. I will not feel the loss occurring. I will not heave and shake and sense the scene within.

Away me and now,
before the heifer needs a brand.
Take me away
to that little waving hand.
"Hi, Mom!"
typed onto the film
above
the little arm,
the little hand.

Despondent, with all the necessity in the world, I search for a quick bit of preserving denial. Make it a nightmare! Make it unreal. Make it anything untrue but, for the love of God, tell me it didn't happen. Tell me so I can close my eyes and sleep with nothing.

A would-have-been birthday is coming. It approaches in pieces, but it would have been whole and fit for a whole child. A whole hand. An 8-year-old growing hand. A hand to rip into presents. A hand to hold a balloon, a forkful of cake. A hand to kiss. A hand to love.

Where is that hand? Heaven aside, where IS that particular flesh and blood? Ever looking to satisfy a void that nothing fills on a birthday where no one sings or even deigns to remember.

All that I wanted forced through cheesecloth.
Such a strange valley. Such a long strange furrow.

I had the film interred with my mother and father and my miscarried child who rests in a small, porcelain box depicting Christ as He holds a lamb. Film, you know, because it was all I had of my first child. If you held it up to the light you could see him/her. And the floating arm, the waving hand, "Hi, Mom!"

The tech could have typed:

"I don't know why you say goodbye;
I say hello."

I close my eyes and hear it.

I see the sweet hand. The precious hand. The outline of five tiny fingers to lace and hold. Substance and form and ethereal beauty... an advertisement for a lifetime of love.

But legs in stirrups spell ephemeral.

I don't know why I said goodbye.

:: ashli 1:06 AM # ::
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