It’s just a street
I tell myself as the road sways
The same street
That’s guided me many nights before
But the shadow at my shoulder is new
A light at the still birth grief clinic flicks on
My unconceived child curls tighter
Clinging to my womb with small nails
What would I say if I were to walk in that door?
A small hand points me forward
As a broken woman searches for my eyes
Abandoned crutches dance up
An invisible body spasming
Warning me from the path I’ve taken
His warning dies with the drop of my heart
Instead, I nod in respect as I pass
When the crutches fall
I try to look back
But the shadow at my shoulder takes my hand
Pulling me along with promises of love
“I just want to be out of the cold”
I yell as the shadow forgets me
It forgets the promises
And again I stand in the same street
That has guided me home many nights
And I’m still cold
About the Creator
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More stories from Krys Howard-Clarke and writers in Poets and other communities.
Reaching Out
I promise her. I'd do anything for her. She's my mom. Even as Lanie and Deanna are flying home, Mom is scrappy fighting dying. She lays too still in that too-big bed with all the toasty white hospital blankets, in the south tower, at the broad end of a long slow-turning corner that delivers me again to her private room with the view she can't see through, with the beeping that tells us nothing new, and all these ice chips she can't swallow, and a flood of well-intentioned nurses who cannot do a damned thing all the same.
By Christy Munson5 days ago in Fiction
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