My doctor shows us the afterbirth
dark blue with blood. I do not think of eating
the placenta or burying it and planting a tree,
or saving the cord for a teething ring.
I do not think of ritual, am deprived of the
expected baby at my breast. My baby,
blue, bruised and bloody, whisked away
while my doctor tries to stitch me together again.
There is This, This, and This wrong
with your baby I am told by a strange
pediatrician on waking to a curtained bed
in a strange room. I milk myself
with a machine, saving each precious drop
for the battered baby I stare at through glass,
trying to find a resemblance among
the tubes and wires, a connection after birth.
Biography
Shirley A. Serviss is an Edmonton writer with three published poetry collections: Model Families, Reading Between the Lines, and Hitchhiking in the Hospital. These poems were previously published in Model Families. Shirley works as the Staff Literary Artist for the Friends of University Hospitals' Artists on the Wards program. She also teaches creative writing for the City of Edmonton.
