no little lips to suckle pert nipples,
no tiny head full-breasted resting,
your brailled areole stupidly stippled:
pointless any emotional investing.
love-leeched lines, so unwitting,
senseless, night-bedding soaked:
milk drip mocks, no longer befitting;
unblessed – strangled prayers spoke.
long after midnight, starkly alone,
absent hero-husband blithely snoring,
only to God her flayed pain groans:
silent-still baby, powerful goring.
knees buckled on cold, cold floor,
head sunken on tear-wetted arms,
shaken, whip-stripped to very core –
unblessed your umbilical tharms.
pathos prayer written, so apt,
read with sob-shaken diction,
rugged heart not handicapped:
faith-utterance vanquished friction.
no more tears, no more damn dying,
death banished by heavenly hope;
no baptism, no needed qualifying,
belief balances on tense tightrope.
_________________________________________
tharms is a word for twisted gut. I use this as an ugly metaphor for that stillborn umbilical cord.
