Wild Writing 14/100

Everything is beautiful and I am so sad

I guess you could sum up my entire life with these words

Always coloring each moment of joy and pleasure and connection 

with the impending ache of loss

How my mind turns on itself, interrupting

How going through actual loss left me surfacey and numb

Even though I expected, and even imagined,

what I would be like, what it would be like, 

to lose

One day you’re pregnant and the next you’re not

One day she’s in your belly and the next she’s

tied up and layered in tubes, 

beeping machines all over, 

her tiny toes 

absolute 

perfection

They said not to touch her 

and I fucking listened

That the sedation was stressful enough, to not disrupt her more

But how can that be true?

That one hour she is on my chest and the next I cannot even hold her?

Why did I listen?

What an utter lack of self-confidence in my own authority to know 

what was right for her, for me, for us

I’ll tell her when she’s older

I abandoned myself first

I never abandoned you

I did what they told me to because you were like a priceless piece of artwork

surrounded by security systems and alarms 

and it was all I could do to stand there 

next to your little display case 

without reaching my hand in to feel you 

wrap your fingers around mine

They have quilts donated to cover all the little NICU beds

and I brought in a quilt we were gifted for you

I swapped them out

The nurses probably thought I was crazy, but 

that was my way of staking claim

She is mine

She is ours

(Prompt from Adrift, poem by Mark Nepo. I am creating a timed piece of wild writing every day for 100 days for this year’s 100 Day Project.)