[I am very pleased to introduce this poem submitted by Danielle Crawford, a young woman at Fairhaven College in western Washington state. She began writing this poem while in her first "official" poetry class, four months ago, and she is now, she tells me, passionately pursuing a double major in creative writing and fine art. If you would like to respond to this poem you can click on comments below or e-mail her directly.]
Four Chambers for Tyler David Tandeski
In memoriam [October 1, 1999]
I.
It stinks like cotton swabs
turned cold
beside Mother’s under-ripe belly.
Six months have passed.
She sits, waits: hunched, hurt
on that inhospitable bed.
I can’t tell her this, but
she’s aged a decade in a day.
Never looked so frail:
a daisy, withered by the worst of winters.
The October sky—
Mom’s crying again,
laying above peppered linoleum,
under so many lights there’s nowhere left to hide.
She’s naked,
barren beneath the gown.
I try to resist, but join her, weep.
*
The doctor’s eyes are dull with mock concern.
I, twelve, confused, want to escape.
In their crisply clean uniforms—
uniform sterility—
they stare, then speak:
The human heart has four chambers…
How were we to know God gave you only two?
*
Years of wait and worry plagued my parents.
Mom’s stiff as the starchy parchment paper
she’s now lying on.
Emotions repressed,
her words are strangled: It’s done.
II.
Did we make the right choice?
After the initial miracle of you, I guess
we believed in invincibility.
An age-old wish, the desire to rewind.
Would it have been selfish—?
We thought of the steps
you never took.
We kissed the ground you never
set foot upon.
Since you’ve been gone,
we’ve lost our footing,
our solid ground.
I try to picture
what you’d be like now.
I’ve dressed your name up in costumes,
cloaked your memory with denial, anguish, rage…
anything I could muster, paralyzed.
I don’t wish to remember you this way.
I’m back where I began:
without a clue.
The cotton, the clothing, that cold room,
my memory, too—
it’s all too white.
I can’t help but wonder if, taken,
you took color from our lives.
‘99. Now seven more.
You would be eight, Tyler, had you survived
half a heart and Down Syndrome.
I’m greedy; I want you next to me.
You still are my brother.
I think of you,
whose footprint—only an inch!—
left a lasting imprint.
The human heart has four chambers…
Your heart was stronger than mine
for letting you go. We need
your malformed heart
to mend our own.
