glad bag

It has been a while
since I unzipped this Glad
bag of far-from-glad.
I dread dredging
up memories too close to the sun lest I dissolve
in a puddle of fat, feathers and blistered skin.
I thumb through black and white images – the only ones I have of you; little
squares of hope I’d fluttered through
so often the edges have been muted.
You look ridiculous, lolling jauntily in your happy
sac with your over-sized cranium – to hold that massive brain of yours –
you would have been smart and kind and beautiful; I just know it.
Also preserved in this plastic shrine:
A WHITE PLASTIC STICK
capturing two rays of pink hope, a little fuzzy at the edges.
SNAPS
of my barely-visible bump; me with a smile so bright
I want to slap my smug little face
(I am no longer that girl; she died with you).
ULTRASOUND REPORT
confirming you were not viable.
I failed you. I’d had one bloody job and I’d failed.
HOSPITAL LETTER
confirming procedure.
You’d been a desperate hope for saving my failure of a marriage.
Even when your tiny heart stopped pulsing its little staccatos, I clung on to you so tight
the surgeon had to scrape you out of my body.
My husband tried to sweep you under the carpet.
But it is impossible to mask the stench of decay, wafting up from between the cracks
of rotting floorboards.
Today you would have been 6 years, 9 months and 22 days old.
For a brief hiccup in the heart of time you were mine;
and I yours.
I realise now that I hadn’t failed you;
and you hadn’t failed me
with your premature departure.
I left my marriage shortly after. You had freed me;
and I freed you