Deliver Her, and: She Moves from Intensive Care to a Private Room Upstairs, and: Night Light

Deliver Her

Do souls float out of us while we sleep?
On the operating table do we
leave ourselves
like a silk lining of a wool pant?
In the hall I pace and picture
surgeons snipping out her heart's partner,
scraping the remains of the black jelly stuck
to her muscles. With it gone,
will her sparking breath,
her energy in ethereal dress,
cling to the starless ceiling?
Will she watch gloved hands
stitch together
silken hairs of a new liver?

At the tenth hour of labor
automatic glass doors fly open.
My angel, flanked by doctors,
floats to me on a silver table: Want
to see her? Oh, yes. She sleeps,
but I know her spirit's here.
I squeeze her toe and blow
a kiss. She smells my scent.
I swear she's nearly pink
as if she'd just come out of me.

She Moves from Intensive Care to a Private Room Upstairs

Now I am able to take her to bed,
a cot clad in cotton which softens
as it absorbs our steamy breath.
We cover our heads and see
light flood through woven fibers
as if from an immature sun,
as if we were inside an egg
whose yolk has been blown out.
We fit together as before her birth,
attuned to each other's touch,
music fluted through our vein mesh.
Our heads wrapped in unfinished silk
as we sleep in light pools of love-grief
until the door bursts open and cracks
our fragile shelter. The phlebotomist
in a labcoat insists on the first blood.

Night Light

At eight I shut the drapes. I want it dark,
like night, black and endless, chilly and velvet:
the daylight's sheet rolled up so I could see
nebula cradle both its dead and newborn stars.

I ready my baby for sleep. The all-night light
from the nurse's station right outside turns
the curtain into a floating mesh fence of endlessness;
the constellation of metal staples fastening

her abdomen glows beneath the split of gown.
Night is never really here, just a rushing quiet,
a hush of rubber soles whispering the day's story.
I play a lullaby to call our light night and signal sleep.

Tonight, though, she waits for me by sitting up.
Some staples fall into my hands as I lift her
to dance, cheek to cheek, in the porous dark.
As if there is no gravity we glide through

the cosmos, through unnamed glitter whorls
beyond the heavens. My joy so great I've got
no body at all, just the inner light of knowing
she's made it back from the other side.