Inspirational Quote 12/4/14: Grieving the Unborn

Spirit

She was seven months in you

wrapped snug in your house of flesh

when she came to rest,

turned her face to the dark wall.

Beyond your high hard hope

you knew in your heart that she was gone,

this sliding shift of gravity

in your belly, in your bed.

You named her Spirit

because this is how she came to you—

there and not there,

a doll baby with eyes

painted shut.  Instinctively,

your hands reach out,

grasp at air,

try to pull the light toward you,

into you, disperse the darkness.

A silent cipher, no one

can know what you have lost.

Now she stares at you

with the indifference of the angels

through the paper eyes, smiles

of baby pictures in your obstetrician’s office,

the glazed gaze of newborns nursing

in restaurants at their mothers’ breasts.

One after another, she tries on lives,

in the frames, in the arms of strangers.

She leaves each like a pair

of discarded shoes.

And so you seek her

in the misty maze to which she has retreated,

the shadow flash of dreams,

the sudden sightings of a body,

small and dark as a polished stone,

         and as cold.

Left still on the couch,

found wrapped in a box,

she practices dying until it is perfected,

until you find a new way

of holding on.

 by Robert Neimeyer, Ph.D.