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
This was beautiful. Your words always speak truth to me. Thank you for this.
This is so touching — an excellent poem of remembrance. God bless you and your family. (and I pray your headaches improves)
Oh wow. This poem is so powerful. I found myself in tears by the end. Thank you for reminding me of the hope of the gloriousness of emptiness as well as its present sadness.
So raw, so beautiful. Fullness in the emptying. Reading Elli’s gravestone again, I am struck by the date you lost her, October 19. You have been so brave to join Relevant that next week, 7 days later. I didn’t know I was meeting you and seeing you again right at that difficult time of year. If I had, I’d have given you a harder hug!
Love,
Gen
Beautiful, heartbreaking, and hopeful. Thanks for sharing this.
Oh this was a powerful gut punch. Honest, true, hard. Five minutes is sometimes all it takes. Thank you for sharing yours with us.
~Lisa-Jo
there are really no words to express anything of what I feel towards this. It is beauty, in the pain, in the speaking of life. beyond beautiful. really.
wow… those were powerful words.
Mid-to-late October is a very difficult time for me. In some ways, going was a good distraction, but in some ways it emphasized how isolated I felt. It was so good to meet you the first year and room together the second.
You have such a way of finding beauty even in the hardest of truths. xo
This poem broke my heart. The raw emotion touched me deeply.
Even in this place of heartache and loss and empty spaces, I just know that He has come to fill you again and again. May He bless you and your family abundantly.
This is beautiful and heartbreaking, October is the month we lost my mom last year and March is the month I lost my Dad, grief can be so season. May you continue to be brave and carry your little one inside you into the future.