CHAPTER TEN
Writing Out Trauma:
A Bobble Hat, a Pair of Jeans
and Grandad
Writing Out Trauma:
A Bobble Hat, a Pair of Jeans
and Grandad
Race
(for Janna)This girl will run against the odds.
Her child’s heart lost control of counts
it oozed, not pumped;
it gave no promises
of seeping into adulthood
or anything like that.She went in her nurse’s uniform
with her Ladybird book of Florence Nightingale
and her grandma’s real nurse watch
measuring last moments
how well we played that game
my girl and I.Someone took me inside the tent where
she was held between air and nothing
on webs as fine as breath,
cradled in nothing
but the flow of oxygen and blood
nothing more,
nothing to say the heart of her still lived,
nothing in all that silence save
the slow sucked gasp she gave
and the screen to chart her passage back to life.
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