THE CHILD WE LOST 1963

There were shadows in the bedroom

Where the light got thrown by the lamp on the night stand

On your mother's side

after midnight

still

You can see it all

you can see it all

And the closet in the corner

On the far back shelf with the keepsakes

she hid

That box there

full of letters of regret

By the pictures of the kids

You get faint recollections of your

Mother's sigh

countryside drive

And the landscape seen from the window of the back seat

With some flowers in a basket

That afternoon after school

You and your older sisters

Found your parents in the kitchen at the table

Father lifting off the lid of the box

And a hush fell

Over everything like a funeral prayer

A reverence

ancestral

heavy in the air

Though you didn't understand what it meant

That they never said her name aloud around you

Even sitting at the table with her things they'd kept

You recall faintly cards

tiny clothes

And the smell of the paint in the upstairs bedroom

Until then you didn't know that's what the box had held

Your parents tiptoeing slowly around

Always speaking in code

No

they never said her name aloud around you

Only told you it was perfect where your sister went

And you didn't understand why it hurt them

So much then that she'd come and left so soon

Could only guess inside your head at what a "stillbirth" meant

Only knew that mother wept

You watched while father held her

Said "Some things come

but can't stay here"

You saw a brightness

like a light through your eyes

Closed tight then she tumbled away

From here

some place

To remain in the night time shadows she made

To be an absence in mom

A sadness hanging over her

Like some pentecostal flame

Drifting on and off

She was "Sister" only whispered

Sometimes "Her" or "The Child We Lost"

You were visions

A vagueness

A faded image

You were visions

You were a flame lit

That burned out twice as brightly

As the rest of us did

When you left

you were light

Then you tumbled away

There are shadows that fall

Still here at a certain angle

In the bedroom on the night stand

By your mother's side

From the light left on there

There's the box in the closet

All the things kept

And the landscape where she left

Flowers on the grave

Marble where they etched that name

And mother cried the whole way home

But she never said it once out loud

On the way back home from where you thought they meant

When they said where sister went

After grandpa got hospice sick

And he couldn't fall sleep

They wheeled his stretcher bed beside her at night

And I saw the light

On the day that he died

By their bed in grandma's eyes

While us grandkids said our goodbyes

She said

"Don't cry"

Somewhere he holds her

And said a name I didn't recognize

And the light with all the shadows combined…;