The Unraveling

After delivering twins too prematurely to survive.

It wasn’t one moment, one breaking, one fall,
It was piece by piece, losing it all.
A slow enough undoing, a hollowing ache,
Our lives torn open, moments I couldn’t remake.

They came too soon, too small, too still,
And time just stopped, against my will.
I held them close, I marveled 
at their translucent skin,
But I knew no matter what, 
love alone couldn’t breathe life back in.

The world kept turning, the days moved on,
But I was frozen, shattered, gone.
A body emptied, arms left bare,
A mother with no newborns there.

The veil was lifted, 
the rose colored glasses shattered
All I knew was that literally 
nothing else mattered. 

I tried to hold, to fight, to stay,
But grief unraveled me each day.
I felt so numb, so lost, so betrayed
It was impossible not to be terribly afraid.
No breath felt full, no light seemed real,
No hands could touch the pain I’d feel.

I wasn’t strong, I wasn’t brave,
I was wreckage, raw and frayed.
Not searching for hope, not finding grace,
Just drowning in the empty space.

But somewhere deep within the ache,
Through all the loss I couldn’t take,
The unraveling became the start
Of slowly learning how to 
stitch back together my heart.

Not back to whole, not good as new,
But into something raw and true.
In the wake of tragedy, 
there will always be a line 
the before and the after, firmly defined.

No words can do justice to what I mean
when I say that I’ll never forget that scene.
Those moments forever etched into my mind 
if only there was a way to redo, to rewind. 

If you were here, if you were turning three
I’d certainly be a different version of me. 
Today instead, I have to sit and feel 
Your devastating absence, which is all too real. 

I hope that while you run through the stars 
You remember that you’ll always be ours. 
We miss you terribly sweet babies, 
and the adventures we’d all be living 
If only this body, my life, fate, 
or circumstances had been more forgiving.  

In Loving Memory of 
Noah Thomas & Victoria Grace
August 4, 2021