A few days ago, I found myself back in the radiology department of the hospital where I gave birth to my premature daughter, a harrowing experience I wrote about three years ago in a blog titled “The Story Of A Preemie.”
As I sat there waiting to be called in for my exam, my whole body attuned to the beep-beep of the monitors and the clicking of the X-ray machines, I started thinking back to those scary times in 2014 and it reminded me that while our wounds—mental and physical—do heal with the passage of time, our bodies will always carry the scars. And sometimes those scars will bleed again, if only for a moment, before we realize only we can staunch the flow.
Trauma
Nestled deep within
The slivered pieces
Of my soul
Lies a raging brute
Dormant and still
Yet secretly seething
Waiting
Watching
For the next shoe
To drop
And send me spiraling
Into nightmares of you
Tiny
Blue
Limp
As an under stuffed
Rag doll
Clutched to the chest
Of a cowed child
Desperate to ward off
The night’s shadows
In the final moments
Before sleep takes her
Flickering images collide
As my scars begin to bleed
For me
For you
For all we’ve lost
Yet somehow gained
And then a peace descends
Upon my bruised
And bloodied body
As I summon your face
Within my mind’s eye
Comforted in the truth
Of your reality
And the strength
Of the life and spirit
Only your ethereal existence
Can breathe back into mine
To make me whole
Once again
*Image by Christopher Paul High on Unsplash.