First Embrace

This post is in response to The Inferno prompt: embrace. It is offered in the hope it will be helpful to another woman who has known the taste of  such regret.

*

First Embrace

I wish I could say I knew

what was happening in my body.

It is my body. I am a nurse.

The pain was intermittent, insistent,

signaled something wrong with my pregnancy,

sent me to the hospital.

But I'd never felt it before

so I turned on my stomach

to ease the pain as I waked off and on

through the night.

I wish I could say I knew

what was happening in my body as I woke that night

and urgently went to the toilet.

A nurse had put a container covering half the toilet.
"Why?", I wondered.

I wish I could say

I picked up that tiny girl

in the white plastic container,

held her and whispered what I thought:

"I'm sorry I failed to carry you long enough for you to live."

She looked so perfect as I stared at her

but she didn't breathe or move her limbs.

And all I did was stare,

never touched her.

And for every day thereafter
I wondered how I didn't do this simple thing-

embrace my daughter,

name her.

I wish I could say that I told that secret

sought help for that remorse

magnifying my grief,

forgave myself, didn't have guilt

that sleeping on my stomach caused the miscarriage,

didn't have nightmares for years 

about forgetting crucial things.

What I can say

is that it took until I was 50

in therapy over another loss for all that to come flooding back.

I grabbed the chance to do it again,

do it as I wished I had done it then-

hold that baby in my arms

greet her, say good-bye, name her-

name her wish, name her love,

name her free.

Mary H Warren

*Thanks to Vikki North at The Red Chair Gallery for her art piece which so beautifully illustrates this poem and which she kindly agreed to my using.

And thanks to Ruth at Rumi Days for the synchronicity of the Rumi poem today "The Bright Core of Failure" which speaks directly and beautifully to this experience.