A Brief Hello
Fruitless labor
Pitocin-dosed
forced contractions
Tears doubled
by knowing
what’s to come
The final push
The heartbreaking
silence
She holds the baby
who will never
suckle at her breast
Tiny boy, gone
before he arrived
An empty promise
Yet, she holds him
Swaddles him
Kisses him
Strokes him
Adores him
Names him
One photo
Mom and Gabriel
Her little angel
Goodbye
© 2013 Amy Barlow Liberatore/Sharp Little Pencil
Well, after the fun with Shakespeare yesterday, I fell into memories of my mom and her telling me about “the one that got away.” Times have changed since then: Even though my mother’s baby was about six months old, she never saw her second girl child. Susan at Imaginary Garden With Read Toads, where I’ve been posting daily since the first of April, asked for a Hello or Hello/Goodbye poem, so this allowed me to put my emotions into words. This will also appear at my poetic birthing center, Poets United.
Nowadays, they take a picture, they do name the baby, they have a funeral, a burial or internment. I think it’s a healthy part of the grieving process that will come no matter what, for the mother with swollen breasts and no baby to feed. I wish my mother could have met her baby girl. May all babies be born healthy – and wanted. Peace, Amy
Lucky Girl Child
Our second sister,
birthed still as stone
Never to serve as
our father’s very own
little plaything – then relive,
after years of self-doubt,
what evils her Daddy
had carried about
I think it lucky
she heard God’s sweet call
Was she not graced
by good fate after all?
© 2013 Amy Barlow Liberatore/Sharp Little Pencil
As always, I speak on behalf of myself, not for anyone in my family. This is my truth, and I tell it willingly to help others.
As frequent readers here at Sharp Li’l know, I was sexually molested by my father. Long before I was born, my mother suffered a stillbirth during her second pregnancy. Fortunately for Charlotte, subsequent pregnancies went well; however, there were consequences regarding my father – which she finally acknowledged knowing about, during the last year of her life.
Sexual molestation is more frequent in families that most would acknowledge. Fathers, uncles, teachers, and friends of the family, of whom over 90% identify as straight men, are the most frequent perpetrators of pedophilia. If you know a little girl or boy who is easily startled, wets the bed past the usual age, seems unusually shy (or gravitates toward adult figures with inappropriate affection), or even tries to tell you about “bad touches,” please take notice. It may be nothing… or it may be everything for that child to be noticed and taken seriously.
For more information on the signs of child sexual abuse, click HERE.
This was written in response to the weekly Trifecta prompt, Lucky, with 33-333 words, including the third definition below.
LUCKY (adjective)
1: having good luck
2: happening by chance : fortuitous
3: producing or resulting in good by chance: favorable>
May the children near you, and all children worldwide, be freed of this tragic circumstance. Until then, I bid you peace. Amy
Sharp Little Pencil 