Squeezed Out

• Posted by: Rosie Sandler
• Created: February 16, 2015
• 0

You’re primed for that final dive

towards the light; but my heart

is misbehaving  – racing yours

in misplaced sympathy.

We move from home

to hospital:

“Blue light,” says the midwife,

“Blue light, please.”

And it’s only afterwards

I understand I could have died:

that my body, primed to push,

could have pushed too hard:

my heart bursting into her hands

with the eagerness of birth.

Would she have caught it,

wrapped it in a blanket,

handed it to your father

to take home – your cot-twin,

wheezing its leaky refrain

 to your new breaths?

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