To come upon a sliver of light in the quiet dark
revealing a beautiful pain.
Between two ears I hear my mother heart.
It beats like a river.
Rushing, as it was created to do.
How her surviving hollow organ
her eyes
her soft skin
was created.
There is nothing nostalgic
about the memory
of being told your child will cease to exist.
All likelihood, though never a guarantee
before you, and before you could ever be ready.
And then there is the significance of what it means
when the unexpected sustaining perseveres.
Bewilderment that one’s blood and unstruck genealogy
continues to deliver a child’s breath.
The grace of respiration.
There is nothing commonplace
in the singularity of mourning
this one being’s perfection.
I break.
Time and time
and still more time.
Again.
In the art of being broken to tiny pieces
I get to know the most precious treasure
that holds the entire universe.
