For a family grieving a stillbirth.

 

If you took out the pain

and held it up to the light,

would it look like

something that belonged to you?

 

Or would it look like someone else’s fate,

wrongly delivered

by an absent-minded God,

who’d forgotten that you’d taken out love insurance?

 

Or would it look like your karma,

reflecting from your life mirrors,

clear and unambiguous,

like everything else in your life?

 

Or would it look like what it is,

there and inescapable,

painful, inexplicable, ambiguous,

and tattooing a face on your heart

that will live forever?

 

Take out tomorrow

and hold it up to the light;

and make it look like something that belongs to you.