The babysitter’s fast slap, on a German cockroach

Stain

• It all depended
• upon the peach juice
• trickling down her arm,
• and icy Kool-Aid drunk
• from green aluminum Tupperware tumblers,
• and lily-of-the-valleys,
• like tiny tea-cups
• in a fairy kingdom,
• and picking blackberries
• in sand buckets,
• they stained so purple.

• And the rains, 12 inches deep
• that doused the anthills,
• mud squelching between her toes.
• And the babysitter’s fast slap,
• on a German cockroach,
• its antennae still wriggling
• long after, and the
• Naugahyde couch,
• where Cheetos-smelling children
• made sweaty indentations
• while watching Dynasty.

• In that summer of separation,
• we knew all, but did not speak.

Spoken on the Birth of my Daughter

• Morning Nurse said, “This never happens to bitches.”

• OB said, “We can try again in three months.”

• “David was so looking forward to his princess,”
• said a friend of my husband’s.

• “It was nothing you did or didn’t do.
• You have to believe that. Things happen,”
• my friend Laura said.

• “Yell at God! He can take it,
• and my Jesus,
• my Savior weeps with you,” said Pastor Tim.

• Remarkable the way people now felt free to tell me their stories,
• I feel inducted into their secret society.
• “My daughter would have been 42. I still mark her birthday.”
• “James. His heart stopped beating in my arms.”
• “Connor, from a genetic defect. He never made it out of the hospital.”
• “Rebecca. Made it all the way to 40 weeks. Cord accident.”

• So many ways for a baby to die,
• it’s a wonder that any of us live.

• What I know to be true:
• “The fetal surface is cloudy, dusky…”
• like the waters before God spoke them into life.
• “Surface vessels are normal,”
• Doctor could not see, I could not hear.
• Sylvia Sage Gasaway’s heart stopped beating at 36 weeks.
• My breast dripped milk for months after

Originally from Gary, Indiana, Anna Abraham Gasaway has resided in San Diego for 12 years. She has been featured in the spoken-word showcase of VAMP/ So Say We All, won awards from Mesa College, and been published in Mesa Visions and CityWorks. She is currently working on a collection of poetry called Silence, Please. She lives with her husband, son, and dog in Linda Vista.