Today’s Five-Minute-Friday writing prompt is “empty.” I wrote this poem a couple of years ago, and thought of it as soon as I read today’s prompt. Rather than write the same poem again (especially since I woke up with a pounding headache), I dug through my archives to find and share it today.

Empty

2am
bright hospital lights behind
shadowed road before
hollow womb so recently tight with baby
infant car seat yawns
empty

white coats wrap rumpled scrubs
breathing machine’s beepBOOP
breast pump’s swoosh-swoosh pulls liquid hope into a bottle
dust settles onto home’s crib sitting
empty

cans of artificial vanilla-masked vitamins
pour engineered nutrition
past tongue and throat into the belly
syringe and tubing draining
empty

dawn on Sunday
her eyes slits
lungs empty
frantic breaths and chest compressions fail to fill
her body
empty
her soul
free

one day
one final trumpet
her grave
(and ours)
empty