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Printed from https://www.writing.com/main/view_item/item_id/2257737-a-five-day-lifetime
by Rhyssa
Rated: 13+ · Poetry · Spiritual · #2257737
for Caleb, who died at five days
While my nephew lived,
five days in April
I should have been taking classes
and writing papers
due the week after he was born,

but I was in the hospital
watching the ventilator
move his lungs
and watching the monitors
trace his heart,

and somehow,
twenty-five pages on Henry James
couldn't hold my attention
like his tiny hand. For
one hundred-seventeen hours
and twenty-three minutes, we crammed

into the NICU, never leaving him alone,
so many tears, so many songs,
lost in white noise. For a lifetime,
(a too short eternity abounding with
greetings, partings, hope, despair)

we told him stories
and we loved him and when he left us,
we ached with an absence
we'd only begun to know.

line count: 25
Author's Note
© Copyright 2021 Rhyssa (sadilou at Writing.Com). All rights reserved.
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Printed from https://www.writing.com/main/view_item/item_id/2257737-a-five-day-lifetime