catastrophe

'Miscarriage'
by Shinji Moon

My mother drank her coffee out of the same travel mug
she had been using since I was a child, the mug that never traveled further
than the kitchen counter.

Here is the portrait. One hand on her stomach, the other
holding my gaze with such a strength that I was afraid I would disappear
if she pulled away.

There was a lost child between my sister and I, a young girl that had
been buried in her; my mother’s hands like grave markings holding the grief
in place.

A child whose name was not yet picked out, whose small hands
she had imagined like rings around her finger. There was

a child who may not have been an artist — a child who might not have
wanted to write poetry or make clay hearts like my sister has done. A

child who would not have given my parents as much grief
as we did.

There is a lost child between us, the size of the four inches
of height between my five feet and my sister’s five foot four.

There is a child whose name we will never know, whose earth
is the warm arms that would let me fall asleep inside of them, inside of
six feet of loving, inside six feet of
loss.

And maybe,
she would’ve been the one who could’ve
saved us
all.