Maybe life died that day

after all

my feet froze in place

and my hands turned a grape-shade of

purple while anxiously struggling to clutch

the China teacup.

 

I wanted to stroke your face

the way curious children finger a newborn’s features

but your body was cold

and only my mind could dart from the fallow position

that callously seized

me hostage.

 

Revelers rejoiced somewhere

I know they did,

oblivious to the ache that seized my

innards.

Even ordinary

tasks like defecating in an oval hole

seemed laborious in every sense of the

word.

 

I stared for a while,

at the slight bump dressing your

otherwise delicate nose and loveliness I would never again

be honored to inhale.

Breathing in everything that made you real

while capturing a mental snapshot

to soothe

for future desperations

or occasions

I simply need my mommy.

 

Twenty-four winters have passed

since that somber time,

war’s brutality

peered its unkind eyes

and lines claimed squatter’s rights by my lips.

Now

I value days when obscurity is gracious enough to

grant a respectable distance.

Perhaps life didn’t die,  

it just became a bruised variant

of whole.

 

— Cheryl Sommese

Honorable Mention, EOL Poetry Contest 2011-2012