I’m sure sometimes even
doctors
have to practice
telling bad news,

until eventually they
think they’re desensitised.
But I’ve seen when
they have to tell themselves
it’s a just story,
to deliver it without crying too.

A little vial of blood
determined the difference between
losing life and growing it.

You were something I never thought I’d have,
the news was delivered like a punch to my ribs,
even after the fist had left
I still felt the pain between each breath.

You
could have been gorgeous,
could have smiled at me from bed
every step of mine reminds me
of the ones you will never take
could have laughed at school and
become the cure to our misery.

Instead, you became the cause;
a tender bruise too new to touch,  
a ripping of my stitches,
the beginning of my end.

To this day
I imagine your smile
in every baby.
I hear your every laugh and every cry
through them —
every video of first steps
reduces me to tears
for they,
could have been yours.

It’s cruel of mother nature,
to remind us
something as common as life
can be so precious, so fragile
that just a crack in the window

in a sheet of glass,
thin as my patience,
lies  between
life and death
and can leave us both
breathless.