“Human nature was originally one and we were a whole,
and pursuit of the whole is called love.” -- Plato
Your cry the call mist makes
to us.
breath, barely dappling your father’s
unshaven cheek.
wren’s breast rise and fall
of your chest.
held in your mother’s arms for less
than a now.
five newborn fingers to clutch
one of hers.
heartbeat skittering across our
inadequate ears.
Your day in life came
and went without
birches to swing from
grass stains from center field
Tonka trucks or Matchbox cars
Maurice Sendak or Mark Twain
the first haircut at the barbershop
that stops, for a moment, all grandfatherly talk.
Not one slice of whatever would have been
your favorite birthday cake.
Life’s receipt was everywhere, uncoiling cords
and tubes, the ping of monitors.
Adrift in the hospital air, low,
empathetic
voices.
Your mother, spent, drops dabbed from her forehead,
a smile just the other side of weeping—
the rest of us barely able to clear our throats
in the face of your broken biology
with which no one lives much longer than a thimbleful
once the doctor takes off
her sanitary gloves.
No matter that the doctors called your condition
Holoprosencephaly.
We learned we were meant to call it love.
Love, which for a day made us one and almost whole,
our tears rising like rain from the earth toward the sky.