A poem for Finlee.
Death has a way of changing you, of changing your perspective. Death of a child changes how a person looks at life. Witnessing and knowing death young often means a child loses their innocence, the very essence of childhood. A rose-tinted world they look through becomes tinged with grey and they become all the more aware of shadows and the heaviness of experience often reserved for adulthood.
it wasn’t a pretty grey
when you left that Saturday.
not the grey before dawn,
but the darkly waiting clouds
holding back river drops
as i brushed the leaves,
not my face.
swept them away,
from my vision like window-wipers, rain.
brushed the damp debris
of a wet driveway,
a highway for one family
with no child.
waiting since Wednesday
restless, deep and buried
a writhing dread lay nesting,
hatching snakelings in my chest.
i fed them
injecting myself their venom
to my insides
numbing vessels, tunnels
collapsing internal walls
until constrictors they became.
consuming me they grew,
squeezing,
intestines and young lungs.
and gripping tightly,
like a vice,
drew more carbon to my blood.
no oxygen
left ringing in my ears
post the call said you had left.
flesh had lost, they said,
your body spent your breath.
on the fight for host
between leech and growing bones
the leech,
a bone-dissolver,
won.
and like nothing,
you were left
on that day.
that Saturday.
on that overcast, grey morning
was the day, a child died.