Friday Original Poem

Something I am working on...

Aneurysm

First day on campus

City choked with dust

High-pitched chatter in the hallways

Smiles touched

Old friends finally meet

Jeanne spilled red sauce on the hoary carpet of our dorm room

Borrowed all of my best clothes

Made certain our comforters matched before we ever met

Pined for an unobtainable boy whose name I now can’t remember

When we discovered Lilly,

Shrieking with pleasure

“We’re both having girls!”

Swollen bellies reclined in my jungle-green backyard

Eyes broad with joy

Mothers in a sea of fledgling women

All facing the same

Tests, allies and enemies

Weekend visits and phone calls

Interrupted by

Nursing babies

Soiled diapers

Little accidents accompanied deafening, chubby tears

You showed me how to plow the dirt in my garden

Grabbed handfuls of mud and pressed seeds inside

That sprouted butter-colored buds

Enchanted offerings to provender unbroken families

You never mentioned the slow leak of money

Or the disintegration of trust

When he sold the ring
You thought I would never understand betrayal

Mute, the way your soul pierced and pinched

When the theater people lied

Treacherously shuffling you out

While you fitted another clean diaper to a not-so-sweet bottom

After Jude (he was the third baby)

The headache burned but you had babies to tend to
Your brain crashed

Overloaded like some manic, sparking circuit board

In front of a room of restless children,

You collapsed against a lacquered, wood floor

Helicopters delivered your body to a nearby hospital

But you never returned