Little Flicker

By Laurie Epps

I am dedicating the month of May to the unsung mothers out there.

Any woman who has been pregnant after 1992, has experienced the miracle of seeing their precious baby on the screen of the ultrasound sound machine. For most, this is a joyous occasion. But this poem is about when something goes wrong, and terribly wrong. In those quiet moments in a sterile hospital environment, panic sets in, and the mother's anxiety is both maddening and deafening. I attempted to capture those brief moments of sheer desperation.

Little Flicker

By Laurie Epps

You were my most photogenic child

Beautiful baby, I love you

We set up your nursery

And bought you fairy tale pajama’s

With dragons and castles on them

Carefully we named you Megan

You were always rolling over

As if bad dreams had come over you

We would try to guess what babies dreamed

And laughed at how I craved Cheetos

I went to the doctor to get a

New picture of you with your sister

Anxiously looking for flickers

Of light that were your precious heartbeats

Frantically the tech and the doctor

Searched for that little glimmer of life

For 5 hours, they jockeyed around

In my uterus hoping for that

Little flicker and did not find it

I knew instinctively you were gone

Your sister did not know it yet though

Part of me died too taking my breath

When the doctor announced your demise

Your sister broke down into sorrow

Her mournful cries now a part of me

Please remember the moms and dads that lost a child to miscarriage, still birth, or other untimely death this month. I lift up a prayer for you all.

Laurie Epps is a non-fiction author, essayist, editor, and poet living in Anderson, South Carolina. A seeker of beauty, her is dream is to travel the world one day and tell the many stories of those she meets. To read more of Laurie's stories come back here for her column about Poetry on Thursdays, or follow her Tuesday column dedicated to writing on: http://thewriteconversation.blogspot.com