An Anthology of Poetry and Medicine
Lack
The making of you went
horribly wrong
but I am still at it,
some lingering construction
that defies my better sense.
Fruitless imagining.
Inside me where I cannot see
there is the site of where you were.
Cells must remain, surely,
maybe in a bloodstream
in a pocket
of organs,
hidden before I had to
let you be taken from me.
You are a lack,
an amputation,
not for the holding or viewing.
I open and fold flat
the clothes bought for you
repeated tactile memorial—
embroidered birds on pale fabric.
Each item bought with intention
of zipping you in, buttoning you up,
nursing you in.
Of your body, there will speak
two handprints, two footprints only
smaller than a doll’s
pressed after they took you from me
from the tiny body I never laid eyes on.
I cannot pursue you
though I doubtless will
(touching fabric, writing words)
seeking the time of us,
the part of me where you once prodded
insistent in our revelry.