looking in the mirror,
holding my tummy,
grasping the memory of yesterday.

for it seems like yesterday
my baby was with me,
her body shared with mine.

I've etched my skin
with art for her,
but it's not good enough.

I shed countless tears for her,
gave her my liveliness,
but only for eight weeks.
It wasn't good enough.

I wanted to give her life,
everything she deserved.
my baby shouldn't have paid for my err.

I will love her for life,
and wait for her to return.

She can not understand
how much a heart can desire
something it never had.
Those little hands and little toes
soft coos and a tiny, button-nose.
Wrapped in white, an angel sleeping,
peaceful and drowsy,
with all the angels waiting.
With hands that don't know how to stay
and cries are all to communicate,
a darling angel grows and cleaves,
relying on one for all she needs.
And wherever in Heaven she may be,
your lonely mother waits for thee.

I lay wanting to have you in my arms
I lay wondering what we would’ve have
I lay in distress
I lay
I wanted to meet you

It’s been a year now since I held your life.
Over a year since I saw you leave me.
Over 12 months since I let you go,
I wish I hadn’t.
I wish I’d kept you close,
Given you some dignity and
A real place to rest.
My numb shock sent you out to sea.
I have a space within me where you were,
A space that I can’t fill for now.
But I will hold your name in my heart,
Till I can make you a family.
Living souls to cling to,
Heartbeats to meet you at the shore.
And say…
’Hello Teddy, we never forgot you’

Once filled with joy, hope and
Enormous energy
I am suddenly
Empty balloons scattered about
One my heart
One my womb
My body has deflated
My soul has gone flat
I am empty

Poem: Empty where you lay

Two decades and one year
Ruptured by my heart

I watch
immobilised
as my frontal lobe detaches and slips out under my door
Too afraid of my agony
Of my actions performed in the darkness
It abandons me
Protecting the parts left attached
of the constant-

-What would you look like now?
Sound like now?
Would you be happy?
Lonely?
At peace with yourself?

Would you possess the heart of a warrior?
Or a peace maker?
Soul of angel?
Or just the mind of a poet?
                     ...............................
I apprehend your second chance of this life
It cracks my spine and spits out splintered regrets
The perfect parents you'll be given
Survival of the fittest
I pull at my lips to form a smile
Because I love you-
Because I know this is a better path for you

I gouge out my eyes
And push them inside my heart

Every space you occupied
Each song you sang
Every performance
I am there in another land
I've memorised every word
Felt every beat

On the pitch at football
Playing with friends
Twisted limbs
Tears hidden beneath my feet
Your first love
First broken heart
I feel them all.....

I fabricate your sadness
As I scream into the cave of my mind
I wretch and choke out for Aphrodite

But she is elsewhere, having cocktails with her Goddess companion, Isis,
in celebration of their latest triumphs
For those hand picked to fulfill their hearts desires
Who live without empty echos
And chaotic minds
Those with a stillness, percolated deep
Carrying auras of golden warmth
Mistaken by the humming bird as nature's
Glowing nectar

I fear those women more than anything in this-
my life
I run
So my jealousy remains caged
                     ............................
I find my frontal lobe at the bottom of a bottle
Sedated in sediment
My local pub say they'd go under without my custom
A weird, turbulent, symbiotic relationship
Gnawing into my desperation

If I were a Disney character
the film by now
nearing it's final scenes
There would be some joyful moral to my sadness
I'd be rescued from myself and live
happily ever after
No voids
No aches
No emptiness

But my scenes are a deadly, grave reality
My cheeks soaked with a desperation
To know
To feel
To love
The fight was lost before gender picked you
Not a fingernail nor strand of hair
for me to swallow
Nothing of you resides within me
Just an unknown
Silent wailing

Self punishment mocks my fragile mind
As it wills me to imagine your scent
Eyes burnt shut
Your shadow runs past freely
Faint laughter falls and stings my lobes
It belongs to you
I know it is you

Knees cracked
Praying for a God, any God
Stitch the fragments of my brain
Begging Aphrodite or her peers for a second chance
Any mythology will do
Desperation knows no limits

BUT NOTHING......................................

Just painful silence of empty echos
My womb forever
................................Empty where you lay.