Carrara Marble

I've been watching faces lately. I have looked at so many faces and I am amazed at how many different ways beauty can present itself. I saw one girl today, just a flash of her, and I thought to myself that her face must be perfection. The proportion, the shape, the twitch of her smile, everything went together just right. When I thought that beauty could not out do itself, there came the most awesome nose. The boy that wore it showed it off nicely, his face protected it. Beauty, one right after another, so many combinations. So many choices. I've learned to appreciate, rather than become jealous of all of the beauty. There are infinite ways to put together a face, so maybe in the construction of my own, a bit of charm may have snuck in. I think it must have because I have seen it in my children.
I have learned that I can't have everything. I find myself reaching for somethings though, the things that I thought life guaranteed me. Namely, you. I thought that you were a guarantee because I would have been a good mother to you. I thought that because I found beauty in you from the day I learned you were here, that you would be mine forever. Beauty doesn't last. Beauty has to breathe. One has to catch it as soon as they find it. One must memorize beauty.
I wonder everyday how beauty would have put itself together in your little face. I wonder at the smile we never saw, and how your eyes may have squinted when you laughed. I wonder if you would have blushed when you received your first Valentine. I wonder what kind of instrument your voice would have been. What song would have bloomed in my heart as you cooed, Frost? I think about the tilt of your head as you looked into the pages of your first book. A beautiful roundness, long eyes downcast, chubby fingers turn pages too fast, excitement and "ohhhs" and "hahas!" Even though I only saw you asleep, I still wonder at your breathing sleep. Little ball? Stretched out arms? Kicking feet? How would you rest? How would you feel the world, Frost? Beautifully, I know you would.
I wonder why I am allowed to see the faces of so many strangers, when the one that owns half of my beauty was frozen in an instant and turned to ash. I have to be my own sculptor and carve and polish my dreams of the beautiful life you would have had. I will work on this my entire life.
Night, night Frost
Mama loves you

Atrophy

I let myself wail today. I needed to and no one was home to be upset by my sadness. I let my sadness crawl through the entire house like a shadow. I let it leave me through tears, through sounds, through grasping fingers. I curled and slept after I spent all of the energy my body had changed into hardness. It wasn't a dark hardness, it was a maternal hardness. It was the ache at not being able to protect my child. My arms! Oh how my arms are hurting! I feel like my tusks have been removed, like my wings have been clipped, like my very skin has been replaced with paper. I cannot feel like an entire person ever again. You have been ripped from me, from my arms. They are empty arms. They need to hold you and only you Frost. I remember the feeling from holding your sister as an infant, it was like that was all I had ever needed. To hold my own baby soothed me as much as it took away her cries. I feel the winter coming on and I am frightened. I don't want to feel those stabs again. Invisible knifes were words and I felt all of the blood rush from my body. I felt a coolness invade me when they said "I'm so sorry." I was starting to warm up again, but now I feel it coming back. Part of me will never work again.
Night, night Frost
Mama loves you

Ten months

Frost and his friends were up in the sky
playing and diving and learning to fly.
They hopscotched on clouds and swung from the stars,
kicking a ball that was most likely Mars.
What cherubs they were in curls and in cheeks.
they danced in the shine of heaven's high peaks.
They were promises and love and once boys and girls,
and now from their tower they watch over the world.
The world in its splendor, the world in its shame.
To both of these worlds they give their kind game.
The curiosity of youth and the discovery of time,
have passed through their hands out to the sublime.
They know things we don't. They cry tears of peace
which fall to the earth and feed every leaf,
every flower, every tree, everything made.
Every parent who broke, every baby that stayed.
Today and far more, I want to give back a gift.
One that gives freely and goes with the shift
of the wind on an easy fall day.
A day that reminds me that each sunray
Finds one person to warm, one person to bathe
in the spirit of so much of what life is made.
And so to the sun and the sky I do send
A balloon to the child who once held my hand.
It's the closest I can get to him, my postcard to the sky.
On it I have written to the baby who died.
Frost and his friends were up in the sky
cheering and grabbing at all of the balloons flying by.
"Frost, this golden one must be yours, look here it comes!"
He reached out and grabbed it, reading "Love Mom".

This is the only thing I could do today. I hope that you caught it.
Night, night Frost
Mama loves you.

What if the water was too hot? I worry about that.

There is a space that the water needs to find.
I change my direction, willing the drops to sooth the watery tread along my back.
I hold my mouth just far enough from the spray,
kissing the shapes I've formed out of the pressure.
I tuck into the heated rain,
letting my spine wrap itself into my ribs,
into my chest,
into my heart.
The warmth is so much a part of me now.
I look down and see red.
I sprawl my fingers across the porcelain,
as the angry pool twists my edges into flattened breaths.
I sink in like I did.
Sound changes itself in my ears.
I am hollow now.

Fog without the moor

I'm a little bit lost right now. The plan I had made for my life included you. Now that cannot happen, so what do I do instead? I look for importance in simple things. I try to impress and seem interesting. Not so many things have come to me since you left. I wish that there was something that could fill my heart as much as you, Frost. I can't remember what was important to me when I was little. I remember having my feelings hurt, I remember being hurt and worried. I remember trying to please. I remember observing. Is that living? I can remember laughing with others and having fun with others, but I feel like that fun was created by them. What did I bring to their lives? I don't know because they have never told me. Sometimes I draw back and then I become fearful that more time will be wasted. That is when I go too far. What do I do? What do I do?
One morning, driving, I came upon a fog. It drifted around me like a ghostly mane. drawn out by the wind into neverending strands. I wondered why it only existed in this part of town. Not over there, only here. My lights dug through the fog's thickness. They fell upon one spot in the mist at the end of a street I had never travelled down in my life. The spot had a glow about it, it floated above everything else. It had a pulse and its light was for me. It wanted me to see it, it called to me with thoughts of you. I lingered in hopes of adding a sign from you to my collection. But I didn't turn down that street and go to it, for fear of being late. I missed out on you because of life. I have to find a time for us when life doesn't matter.
Night, night Frost
Mama loves you

The Gilded Snickerdoodle

I was thinking to myself earlier today, and I took my own breath away. I started asking you in my head what you wanted me to tell you about. I whispered out loud 'What do you want mama to tell you, Frost?" Nobody else heard me, I was away from them. I knew this, so I asked you again. Words kept creeping out of me. Soft squeaks, sounds unaccustomed to air. I let the weight of the words pull my head down. Nobody saw me. I looked at what my hands were doing. Making cookies. I shattered at the thought that you would never know cookies. I took myself away from them. I watched the corner for something so plain that I would not be saddened by the fact that you would never see it. The stained plastic bucket, the stained plastic wall, the broken tile. You wouldn't have become a great man through the influence of these things. I settled my eyes on them, and their lack of beauty settled my heartbeat.
But what if the the bucket had been a beautifully crafted basket, twined by a Hopi woman long ago? What if the wall had been a lost fresco from Pompeii? And the broken tile, one of Byzantine splendor? What then, Frost? You missed my day today, my slow world, my plain world. Even though my life is not exciting, I would have loved to have seen the exaltation in your face the first time you ever had a cookie. Those are the days that real lives are made for.
It wasn't until later that I tried to share this part of my day with one other. I gave hints and the wrong questions were asked. So the time stayed between me and you. I have to remember this.
Night, night Frost
Mama loves you.