Emerging
Courageous Online Magazine - Poetry
For Elena by Ana Reid
The sky’s unclear within its grayness,
the sirens from the ambulance
smear color to a cool winter’s night.
On the fifth floor Elena sleeps,
with the paleness of her
skin indistinguishable
from her hospital gown.
She opens her eyes,
looks around for her husband,
who stayed by her
during delivery;
she searches for the light
within his eyes, but finds
nothing but the gray walls.
Over the hospital,
a winter breeze sighs,
souls are carried on it,
caught like pigeon feathers
in the wind…
her baby boy,
flies away to the angels.
*
Only pain
revolves within
the hollow center
of her stomach
lifeless
a shattered
eggshell
her hands
an empty basinet
welcoming no one
*
Elena,
my body lays here, waiting,
muscles contracting,
my pelvis opens,
a bulb with no petals.
Only two days ago,
you were here,
though you remember it
like the owl
remembers, to wake
and hunt at night.
You resent me.
I know, it’s as if
o
you search you abdomen
with your palm,
each contraction relived
as if you can feel me
give birth,
even when, from your
body, there came only
nine months of death.
*
Somewhere,
beyond the side of the river,
there must be a creek
where children bathe
while their mothers
wait to give them birth.
Time soars by,
a grain of rice,
trapped inside
the beak of a pigeon
as it passes overhead,
speckled white wings
within the dim auroras
of sunset.
***
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