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Mama's Promise


I have no answer to the blank inequity
of a four-year-old dying of cancer.
I saw her on TV and wept
with my mouth full of meatloaf.


I constantly flash on disasters now;
red lights shout Warning. Danger.
everywhere I look.
I buckle him in, but what if a car
with a grille like a sharkbite
roared up out of the road?
I feed him square meals,
but what if the fist of his heart
should simply fall open?
I carried him safely
as long as I could,
but now he's a runaway
on the dangerous highway.
Warning. Danger. I've started to pray.

But the dangerous highway


     when I hold his yielding hand
     and snip his minuscule nails
     with my vicious-looking scissors.
     I carry him around
     like an egg in a spoon,
     and I remember a porcelain fawn,
     a best friend's trust,
     my broken faith in myself.
     It's not my grace that keeps me erect
     as the sidewalk clatters downhill
     under my rollerskate wheels.


Sometimes I lie awake
troubled by this thought:
It's not so simple to give a child birth;
you also have to give it death,
the jealous fairy's christening gift.


I've always pictured my own death
as a closed door,
a black room,
a breathless leap from the mountaintop
with time to throw out my arms, lift my head,
and see, in the instant my heart stops,
a whole galaxy of blue.
I imagined I'd forget,
in the cessation of feeling,
while the guilt of my lifetime floated away
like a nylon nightgown,
and that I'd fall into clean, fresh forgiveness.


Ah, but the death I've given away
is more mine than the one I've kept:
from my hands the poisoned apple,
from my bow the mistletoe dart.


Then I think of Mama,
her bountiful breasts.
When I was a child, I really swear,
Mama's kisses could heal.
I remember her promise,
and whisper it over my sweet son's sleep:


              When you float to the bottom, child,
              like a mote down a sunbeam,
              you'll see me from a trillion miles away:
              my eyes looking up to you,
              my arms outstretched for you like night
.

Written by Marilyn Nelson

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