Oh, did I kill you child?
“Child.”
Is it right to speak the word?
Though thick with tears, I am complicit.
My child, murdered with scientific sight,
was a person half formed, but a being not quite,
with tiny hands, feet but no breath, or sight.
Was it our child, ultrasounded,
that was either happily or unknowingly wriggling
in mum-womb’s universe until,
the drug-induced daylight,
that is, the night?
We called you Danny, anyway –
light winged dryad of the trees.
Danny, who was here but never knew.
We’ll bury your tiny body,
with a doll-sized hat and blanket,
in the allotment
beside your sister’s placenta.
I will hold hands with your mother – we are just children too,
and we know not,
except what we knew.
In the hope that this instead will fruit,
Danny, we plant a tree on you.
