Julianna Baggott
A month ago I was yawed open
the stitches prinning inside of me still
little memories of the knife.
I was pinned to the fetid bed
by the baby's vertebra -- pearly thing
sharp as a shark's jawbone.
And then there was the bloody vomit,
and the baby, too, was knifed open,
his eyelids taped shut during surgery
leaving two raw rectangles on his temples.
His foot was taped to a splint so the IV
could stay put -- his foot pinking brightly
under the tape, bulging sweetly
around the shunt while the morphine
ticked into his blood. The barium, so elegant,
slipped to him from a bottle -- we watched it
on the overhead monitor
ink down his throat.
I milked worry from my breast -- soft breaths
of the breast pump.
I worried him here. We wondered what might
become of him -- how a child can be born
blue, the neurons disabled, the skull
unfused.
See, here, his brain pulsing
in the soft cage.
What would be so bad about a joyous boy
disconnected, disabled in some way, untethered
from the vexation, from worry? What would be
so bad about tender fuses?
Today, the tape around his wound is peeling up
at its edges, brittle as a moth's wing. I can see
the dainty scar, run my finger along the exposed edge
of its thin groove.
And I recall only the lead aprons
weighing us down,
as if our sorrow weren't heavy enough.
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