‘It's Funny What People Will Say & Do to Relate to One Another’, ‘The Separation’, & ‘A Sky of Bombs’.

Photographer - Tobi Brun

It's Funny What People Will Say & Do to Relate to One Another

Her purple-hued legs, as long as my fingers
& the tubes that ran throughout her body
were as thick as her pine-needle arms.

When you explain to people
your baby is in the NICU, they never know what to say.
Prattle about a baby they once knew
who survived or read about
in a Facebook post. They preach phrases like normal,
you’d never know, even graduated early, or
only had a hole in their heart to make you feel relieved.
Jostle, how lucky you are & how thankful
you should feel. Your baby will be fine, & these moments
will pass when you can’t hold her, feed her, bathe her,
touch her petal-thick skin that you once grew.

Curious people ask if her eyesight
will be okay & I wonder if oxygen
lines will snake through her nose forever.
Or pry if she will always be so tiny - can she catch up?
All I can think of is that because she was born
so young, she hadn’t learned the reflex of suckling
& swallowing. No matter how many breastfeeding articles I read,
it would never matter as a toothpick-sized orange
feeding tube winds through her nose for nearly 45 days.

It’s funny what people will say &
do to relate to one another.

When in the dark of night, while everyone rests
& IVs streak both of your arms, you cry
with no sound, so nurses or your husband don’t hear
because you should be thankful you survived.
She survived.
But your body feels empty
& your arms pine to hold her
foot-long body next to yours in rough
patterned hospital sheets.

Instead, in the quiet beeps of hospital rooms
you grieve the dreams you had
for your pregnancy, birth, & the beginning

days of her life.
Grief’s like heavy weights
tied to your feet as you learn to walk again,
shuffle one foot after another
to the NICU in the morning light.

The Separation

Before they pulled her wet-slicked being
from my numbed body, they prepped us
we may not hear her cry.

Minutes before, her heart rate dived
to a faint tap & her 3lb body
had stopped moving.

No matter if I had changed position,
sipped chilled water, or however deep
they dug the ultrasound wand into me;

her life-filled body had become lifeless.

As my body rocked back &
forth like a swing in the wind, they carved
through 7 layers of my body.

I shivered from the coldness of metal tools
slicing thick tissue & the nurse to my right
gabbled everything they were doing, reasons why, & I couldn’t hear a thing.

Only thoughts of how
my 7-month-old baby that had grown a part of me
may not scream, cry, feel, or be alive.

My husband rested his hand on my hairnet
& soon we heard little bleats, a wet lamb
dropped in a pasture left to survive.

In a moment, we became two entities
left to laugh, wail, & feel the world’s aches
separate.

a sky of bombs

i can’t help but think
how things would be different if she
came under sky-cascade of bombs
on the gaza strip,
explosions like the uncurling of broken bones
snap in the sky. images of starved babies,
four in one hospital crib
in darkness without electricity & running water.
their misshapen heads, ribs raised
through bodies like the flat
& sharp keys of a piano.

women, like Walaa, their bodies
inside out to give birth on the bitter,
cracked earth between refugee tents with only
her uncle’s wavering flashlight &
vibrations of bombs ricochet. no medical care
& a baby’s limp purple body between her legs
waiting to be starved.

Whitnee Coy has an MFA in Creative Writing from Eastern Kentucky University's Bluegrass Writers Studio, and has taught creative writing throughout the past 13 years at various programs and colleges/universities including at Oglala Lakota College, a tribal college on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation. She have two chapbooks of poetry published "Kintsukuroi" (Finishing Line Press) and "Cicurate" (SD State Poetry Society) and has been published in various literary journals such as "Pasque Petals", "Poem Memoir Story PMS", "Jelly Bucket", and "Havik: The Las Positas College Journal of Arts and Literature".