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Ethics
- Red Hen Press
- Chapter
- Additional Information
76 eThics I am waiting for him to wake up, I am waiting for him to die. I never wanted children really, Ideas about motherhood, capital M A different language My own world Narrowed to gym plates And smoking cigars with the guys. So when the EPT Showed its straight pink lines It was not by design and I fought him By running up mountains, Swinging weight after weight, treadmill sweats You will not stop me, Will not slow me back Though I couldn’t make that decision To really stop him And months settled into more And I kept running But painted his room in bright greens And orange dragons and named him Drake. Something went wrong In the hours of his birth 77 That the midwives couldn’t handle And a long line of doctors Smiling like a troupe Of male dancers in green suits, Scrubbed up to cut me open, get him out Already too late. After a week of brain scans, lung machines They said they could take his tubes out And I could hold him for the first time, for He was going to die, or live his life With no more development than this, A fourteen-day-old child’s brain And as his parents we had to decide. I wouldn’t hold him. His father did, I turned my face away. I stood there with nurses, Their eyes on my face But after five minutes I touched my husband’s shoulder And reached for Drake. His weight, his still face, His open eyes on mine, I knew— Knew for the first time that I wanted him And knew that I wanted him to die. ...