Bad Dreams

I wrote a poem once, not one of my favorites, but anyway it was years ago. A young girl, 21, was engaged to one of my employees and became pregnant. In her 8th month, she got up to use the bathroom in the middle of the night, and collapsed. She blocked the door with her body. A blood clot had traveled from her leg to her lung and killed her instantly, but her boyfriend didn’t know that, and only after he’d removed the pins from the hinges to get to her did he call 911. It took too long and the baby died, too, and later he showed me pictures of the two of them in their single casket. The baby, Natalie was to be her name, was full grown, and she slept eternally in her mother’s arms, and it was as tragic a thing as I’ve ever seen. It’s one of my irrational fears, that this will happen to me. I’m certain it won’t, but it still haunts me. Back then I wrote this sort-of-poem about it, and maybe by splashing it out on the internet I will rid my silly mind of this demon.

I sing aloud of hopeful troubadours

I think of men whose wives were small and neat

And babies born with smartly kicking feet

All mine, all yours

And then I think again

On a milky breast that never got to nurse

I hope that when I go

My eyes close on

Something

More romantic than a toilet

Was it clean?

Vomit

The only dram to help him after

The frantic frenzied search for occupation

In the wake of a fall

He picks up and discards them all

A new picture in his wallet every week

Still the ring rests on a chain around his throat

And I wonder how he sleeps

And for her and her, an endless rest

Arm in arm and breast to breast

In some other universe

They are teaching her to walk today

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Nora