CHARLOTTE'S PURPOSE - Poetry

8/10/2018

23.5

Read Now

By Heather Carnaghan

One year ago today
the whole world pointed at a different north star.
I thought in five year plans and tomorrows
and without fail
my sentences ended in exclamation.
Your perfect name
was forever affixed to my plans for you.
Those mountains we'd climb
together
were permanent too
like the paint on your nursery wall.
How shocking
isn't it
that one year can teach us
to see the tilt in the axis,
the humanity in a whale,
and mountains
that are no more permanent than you nor I.

8/10/2018

Orca

Read Now

by Heather Carnaghan (8-4-18)

Every grieving mother watches
intently,
sadly,
hopefully,
as the world learns more
of grief
from a whale
than their neighbor.
10 days
10 weeks
10 months
10 years
If I am meant to live ten lifetimes without you,
Little Whale,
Little Fox,
I shall still be found
lifting you up.

7/21/2018

Nine

Read Now

by Heather Carnaghan

From an outside perspective
I am certain
these milestones have no meaning.

The 21st is just a day
like the 20th before it.

In the beautiful Before
I missed them too.

I never commemorated
Jack's third word
or recognized Sam's tenth curl
but today, I know,
marks nine months since her death,
Nine months
since she was nine months inside of me.

Tomorrow I will have grieved
for one day longer
than my daughter's entire life.

3/21/2018

Phoenix

Read Now

by Heather Carnaghan

I wish I believed in genies,
in fairy godmothers
and Jesus.

What a beautifully comforting thought
it would be
to picture you
warm, eyes glistening,
cooing in the laps of angels
and rising
from your ash,
a gold feathered phoenix.

I don’t need three wishes
or a thousand prayers of intercession.
I have only one desire
that matters
and no spirit can grant it.

3/21/2018

Hiccups

Read Now

by Heather Carnaghan

I whispered your name to the same trees
that already knew it well.
They wept acorn tears
and clung to their last leaves
defiantly remembering the spring
as I angrily failed to find the words
that could conjure the sound of your last heartbeat.

I told each squirrel to relay my love
should they find you in the wood.
One stared curiously at me
and, for one lingering moment,
we shared the thought of you.

I released a stone inked with “two months”
onto the undisturbed silt
below the surface of the lake.
It’s tiny engraved fox
will soon be covered with ice
and, like your hiccups,
only I will ever know it was there.

3/21/2018

Smell of the Forest

Read Now

by Heather Carnaghan

Missing you is a physical ache deep in my chest;
It’s a heaviness that bends my spine
and burdens every step.

Is there something deeper,
truer
than “I love you”
that a mother can tell her child?

I love the smell of the forest.
I love the taste of a raspberry
plucked sun-warm from my grandfather’s garden.

But you,
you are a need in my soul
that “I love you” can’t explain.

What words hold in them
every breath I breathe?

3/21/2018

Sucker Punches

Read Now

by Heather Carnaghan

There it is,
the look of recognition
the scan of my body
and the moment she takes in
my shrinking waistline.

She gleefully asks, “Did you have the baby?”
Timidly, I squeak out “Yes”
My nod is too emphatic; it raises alarm in her eyes,
She was born, but
“No”, my head sways left and right,
less adamantly
more confused
She never came home with me that day
Her eyebrow raises and I doubt my answer
Should she count less than babies who do?
My head bobbles, my gut contracts.
My limbs itch to run or fight.
I race to the nearest locking door
so I can catch my breath
before the next
“How many children do you have?”
“Where’s the baby?”
or “We’re expecting!”

3/21/2018

Whispered

Read Now

by Heather Carnaghan

It is no religious miracle
nor medical marvel
that I have survived for one month
with a piece of my heart
forever gone.

It is a feat of strength
borrowed from friends
and carried by you.

In my weakest hours
and ugliest of times,
when I had nothing to return,
you held my hand
and whispered, “I love you”.

3/21/2018

Chocolate Brown

Read Now

by Heather Carnaghan

Your chocolate brown crib
so carefully assembled
and covered in the softest bedding
has a flowing ruffle below.

A mint colored blanket
stitched with love
still sits folded in anticipation.

Your name is painted in cheerful script
behind a delicate paper mobile
hung to make you smile as you gaze up at it.

All it does is make me long to know
the color of your sleeping eyes.
Hazel? Green?
Or chocolate brown like Daddy’s?

3/21/2018

Due Date

Read Now

by Heather Carnaghan

All of the broken promises
of this beautiful
and awful date
are heavy in a place in my heart
where, now exists only stolen hope.

Who I was
and who you would have been
died that day and left me
with all of the parts of motherhood
that the drug of a newborn’s smell subdues.

How cruel it seems
that I also have this love
that is so deep
that I will take all of these awful things
if they are all I am meant to have of you.