when your child comes out stillborn, they give you 24 hours with him.
24 hours of bleeding lips, 24 hours of fragile skin, 24 hours of cold toes.
they bring you food every three hours with the knowledge that you won't eat it, but the comfort of it there is.. sort of nice.
things like this aren't supposed to happen this far along is what they will whisper while they think you are sleeping
24 hours of he's getting colder, 24 hours of a lifeless, still rib cage, 24 hours of come on baby, just open your eyes for mommy.
making your way to the hospital, you hoped to come home with a bouncing blue boy but instead you come home to a cribless room.
they say it's easiest if people get rid of the reminders for you but his empty things are the only way i will ever feel whole.
then they start asking you the hard questions as if you didn't just press the button enough times to tame an ocean with waves full of guilt that will swallow your lungs.
24 hours of limp limbs and unreturned breathing patterns, 24 hours of there's some more flowers here for you, 24 hours of please just leave us alone.
we have 1 more hour together and your unresponsive nerves are growing colder. they made molds of your hands for me like they didn't know i would hold them forever.
we have 1 more hour together and the nurses will never be more apologetic in their whole lives than they are the moment they have to take a sleeping child from a mourning mother.
we have a little under an hour and as you wail, people watch from afar wondering if they'll ever be able to understand that sort of pain, the pain that makes you feel god has ripped your body open and left you for dead, the pain that makes you feel that this life really isn't worth living, the pain that there is no or might not be any god at all.
hours, minutes, seconds, days, time can't even begin to describe how long these panicky flashbacks of the moment they told me they found no heartbeat go on for.
