haibun: the yellow room
This room she never saw glows with her. The dragonfly mobile we planned together. The yellow walls like her new walls, that I never saw. The yellow walls like her yellow walls, in the rabbit bedroom she designed at ten. The yellow blanket she crocheted at eight, sent for the baby the week before she died. The plush deer guarding the crib, rescued from dad's attic, hers at six.
In the small hours the baby wakes from nightmare. She's only five months old -- what does she dream about? In the big chair, I rock her while she whimpers, then coos, curls in. The nightlight is soft; it throws dawn shadows on the ceiling: the mobile, the crib rail, the surf of the rocking chair. The house shivers in spring rain; faint hum of the gutters. The baby makes a sweet noise in her sleep. Whose room is this? Whose childhood?
her dragonflies --
their shadows
2 Comments
Erin,
This has been the hardest day in the past nine months. Nine months. It’s a pregnancy. And what has been born of this? My mother tells me that these things always happen for a reason. My mother is wrong. She is wrong.
Just like the making of dragonflies. I’ve worked so hard to fill the gaping hole. I have been more than mad! I reached out to a world that has been silent. A world that refuses to respond. A world that isn’t brave enough to think about making dragonfiles because the one you loved could not.