by Lorette C. Luzajic

after Death, by Janis Rozentāls (Latvia) 1897

The day you were born, the last day of May. We’d never seen Daddy so giddy, waiting for you. We were waiting for you, too. Earnest and awkwardly cerebral, I’d been reading to you already, for months now, Frost, Yeats, Keats, chin propped up close to mother’s big belly while she rested from the heaviness of carrying you. Almost too old, and our father, snipped. A miracle. Then, a storm pulled heavy into the atmosphere, clouding the mirth of our anticipation.

Later, you would run about in chubby overalls and dance out a tune you made up: I am an immaculate child, a rhythmic pause after each syllable, and a melody of giggles. But for now, you were a furrow of darkness on father’s face.  Everything in slow motion in that corridor of rushing doctors and stretchers. Grief already ruining him, just the threat of it. The solemn physician, murmuring how your little lungs were just not ready. How we should prepare for the probable. We’ll do everything we can.

The nightmare that didn’t come true. Another miracle.  Inside the incubator, with us keeping vigil all around, your pallor bloomed from turmeric to milk in no time.  One moment, a scrawny insect, the next, a mewling baby boy. I’ll never forget our father walking that tightrope, looking straight into the abyss. How he treasured us tirelessly every day after, wore the imprint of that terror through to his end, the edge of those unspeakable possibilities.

_____________

_____________

_____________

Lorette C. Luzajic writes prose poems and small stories, usually inspired by visual art. Her work has appeared in Axon, Ghost Parachute, Citron Review, Unbroken, MacQueen’s Quinterly, and more. She is the founder and editor of The Ekphrastic Review, a journal devoted to literature inspired by art.  She is also a visual artist, with collectors in over thirty countries so far.