STILLBORN

I never wrote my story
Or sang a song in chorus.
Any balls I dreamed to catch
Would never soar my way,
But suspended in living fluid
I once heard muffled music—
Voices close and far away
Awaiting the timeless moment
When my eyes might open.

Shades of light danced in my senses
Like a kaleidoscope I would never know,
And I struggled against the feeling
That my time would never come.
No reason ever offered comfort
To my sister, once old enough to ask
As she held my only picture,
Taken before I turned to ash.

So many years later
Through the ether I overhear a wish
That her namesake might be remembered
In a series of children’s books.
No writer has offered to imagine
All the stories of my life,
But through the living I can see
I was stillborn but never died.