You played hide and seek
through our dreams for years
before you arrived.
Then, once we’d tigged you
– that squirm of blur
inside that pulsing screen –
we lay at night trying
not to giggle; straining
to hear your heartbeat.
You made us laugh a lot,
and disagree, and talk till 3am
of names, and whose nose you’d get.
And then you, who had lived
with us such a blink of time,
left.
And we are left, holding
onto nothing but naming books,
and our lurching world.
For you braced your whole
13cm self, and threw our
planet off its axis.
One Response to “We were parents”
Helen Sargeant
This poem brilliantly captures the deep love and connection the parents felt for their child. Their tragic loss and the fragility of life is felt through these deeply affecting words.