Selected Poems

My belly round and covered in a greyish map of stretches rippled as the DNA weighed heavy on my spine and an elbow jammed into my sciatica. Sitting in the driveway, swollen feet buried within a square bucket of ice cubes, the sun slipped under the warm crocheted covers of twilight that teased my aching senses. As the swelling dissipated, the scavenger hunt for my cat restarted. Have you seen my orange cat?

Rescued from a neighbor’s backyard, Claude with his Garfield sized body and stripes slinked home like a spy, appearing and disappearing from the canvas of bushes. Holding one side, my breathe was paralyzed as a riptide of excruciating volts ripped through me. And then it was gone as quickly as it came, and I made my way back home. Grabbing a yogurt, I froze just 10 minutes later as another jolt pierced my side. 

Navigating a mile North, ½ mile West, we casually talked baby names and the color of paint in between shrill knives that serrated my words. It was 9 pm. Yellow is nice. Sunflower, daffodil, or bright like a ray of sun?

Thump thump. Thump thump. 

Bass rhythms echoed off the snowflake white walls like the pitter patter of an African drum as wires and pads were stuck to the round shell of my baby's amniotic nirvana. Resembling a company's net income line graph, vital signs recorded and spilled out the side of a machine on wheels giving printed reassurances. Sent home with a ½ gallon jug of water to satiate misdiagnosed dehydration, I drank and drank and drank and imagined sweet coos and hiccups. 

Within the hour, my insides sporadically screamed louder than a parachuter free falling with a tangled chute. Returning to the white walls now glacier cold, we no longer compared the varying hues of yellow. 

Thump thump. Thump thump. 

The tapping bounced methodically inside my walls like a metal ball ricocheting across a pinball machine. His silhouette displayed on a grey screen like an old time reel-to-reel movie. His hand gently lifted as he floated in his safe cocoon. He was safe. 

Burgundy flowed from my veins filling tubes. I winced as another shock rippled through me as I peed in a cup placing it on the metal shelf. Hours passed as we impatiently waited for an explanation. 

The size of my cervix opening was not measured. No one thought that this was important. No one considered that I was in labor. No one took my anguished pains seriously. Lightening continued to strike and retreat electrocuting my bones and muscles and cells causing me to clench my fists and lose my breath. 

At 3 am still waiting for lab results, tears escaped as I was unable to absorb the pain any longer. Teresa frantically ran to find someone as she thought to insist on a cervical exam. No one else thought of that. She was not the one supposed to think of that. 

With a casual air the doctor peered up from between my legs vulnerably spread open and blurted “this baby is coming tonight”. She paused, then dismissively added... 

                    “and won't survive.”  

The world stopped spinning. It tilted like a kicked pinball machine and fell off its axis careening in deafening silence. The ocean waves stopped crashing as the water instead swirled in an endless black funnel. Oxygen was sucked away as if a Dementor from Harry Potter wrapped his lips around mine stealing my soul. Time had stopped like I was in the Twilight Zone, but it was real. 

I died at that moment. The person I was before that moment no longer existed. 5 hours later that doctor with no compassion walked in upbeat and with cookie crumbs falling from her lips announcing “okay, let's see if this baby is coming now.” 

Gregory Tomas 12 inches long and weighing just under a pound was born with an Apgar score of 1. He earned that with one breath. He lived a lifetime with that one breath. And 5 minutes later, he was gone. Lifeless and fragile, I held him absorbing that he could never open his eyes to peer into mine and see how much I loved him. We held him for 30 minutes more. An incubator was wheeled in to keep him warm. The nurse tenderly washed him, put a blue cap on him covering his dark hair and wrapped him in a warm blanket with baby bottles on it, a cocoon to keep him safe. We counted his toes and fingers and noticed the dimple on his nose, like mine. He had muscular legs that he would never use to take his first steps. I felt pure love and overwhelming loss. 

Our Rabbi came to the hospital later that morning to do a service. The Nurse asked to join us and our friend Holly came. We huddled together and cried sharing this surreal moment in time. 

I wasn't able to give him a funeral. I just couldn't. His remains are in an ivory container made to look like a baby toy ABC block sitting in the bottom left drawer of my dresser where it will remain until I die. He will then be buried with me, my first child. Dust to dust. 

On that night and for months after, I thought I could never experience happiness again. But somehow from the depths of loss, I found the strength to try again. Almost one year after losing Gregory, I found happiness when Renee came into this world with a beautiful round face and 3 years after that, the joy multiplied when Joey arrived with dark hair and a dimple on his nose resembling Gregory.