I dreamt of him again last night.

His tiny hands clench in unrelenting, formidable fists

His face pinched, as if to shut the world away.

Monitors and tubes and lines.

His whole aura radiates the white heat of pain.

I stroke his hair

and he flinches,

tremors shuddering through his body.

Alarms bleep and lights flash

as if to announce that my merely touching him

has caused a catastrophe.

When I look back to my baby

he is grey and lifeless

and his eyes, although they are positioned on my face

look straight through me.

I wake up suddenly, sweating, heaving, crying.

+++

It’s this place,

this tiny room.

Shut away from most of what keeps  me from thinking too much.

I am in the very hospital he was born in.

A place of absolute happiness

and worst nightmares.

It is about 3am

3:06 actually, when I look.

A time relevant only to me

and for a moment, in my blurred half -  sleep,

I think the years it has taken me, to get to this point

have been nothing but a figment of my imagination.

I reach down to rub my belly and then

in sudden realisation

the tears come

hot to my cheeks.

+++

It’s daytime now and she knows I have been crying.

Without a word she takes my hand, strokes it lightly

and snuggles her curly head deep into my chest.

Like some worldly elder.

We stay that way until her own machines start whirring and complaining that they have done what was asked of them.

More fluid is required.

I mop my face and make to  move from our space

but her small hand holds me firm.

The night nurse comes, her tired eyes cast to ground.

One foot in front of the other: twenty minutes until the end of shift.

Nobody speaks a word,

the air filled with an emptiness found only in hospital.

When the door is closed

she asks all the hard questions -

innocent but hard.

“Why did he have to die Mummy?”

and then;

“You can be sad because William died but we made you happy again, didn’t we Mummy.”

It’s a statement but I hear the pleading in her voice.

I nod and smile and take my parenting role back,

cuddle her close.

Today I have never been more grateful for her realness.