I suffered a dozen miscarriages before doctors were able to help me and I was blessed with my three children. When I got pregnant with my oldest daughter, Victoria, it was months before I allowed myself to think of her as really possible. This poem was written to her when I realized that she really was.

For the record, she was born healthy and happy - and 9 1/2 pounds! And now, her baby sister is asleep in my arms as I type this. We really are so blessed.

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Awakening


oh child, after all of these years
i am full of you at last, keeping you
like bread in a warm oven. finally
we are rising, swelling,
becoming real.

my thirteenth wish, my last hope, you
are filling me with breath.

and how strange
after all of those years
of my easy, easy blood
and squallish tears, all of it
that i stopped up
that now i must have help
to cry and bleed and keep you.

pills to thin my blood
shots that bring back tears
hormonal concoctions
to undo
what took years to dam.

and now, we sleep and dream
and try out this foreign life, knowing
that each of us
with our new, rare heartbeats
is a last chance.

i wanted to feel you inside me
but first
i had to feel myself.

oh child, my handful of life,
my blood is running again
and we are real.



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All works on this site Alicia Bayer unless otherwise noted.
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