The Other Side of the Night You Were Born

I held you in my arms, smelling your sweetness,
tracing the curve of your cheek with my fingers,
kissing your softness,your hair,into my memory….
willing them not to abandon me.

On the night you were born,I cradled you next to my warmth wanting its imprints to absorb into your very being.

The first time I held you on the night you were born,
I smiled at your newness,looked into your eyes in recognition & named you.
I named you Mary Robin on the night you were born.

I whispered I love you.I sang the lullabies I wrote for you & told you the litany of our family.
I christened you myself with my tears for holy water
in the darkness of my room on the night you were born,
for no one else was there to do it, save God and you and me.

And in the morning light,
a stanger came to cull you from my heart.

Your warm sweetness,your breath,
the web we wove together invisible but taut between us
……pulling,growing longer & longer….
a silver mapline to follow
if only we could see it.

“I can’t do this,” I wept.
“Yes you can.You must,” they said,& away they went
as I began the long,long journey through the years
of our lives to find my way on a path they hid
that could lead me back to see you once again.
It has been 36 years & my heart is still breaking.

© 1996 Mary Catherine Evans