Bonding

When the first contraction comes
I clutch the bathroom doorframe,
paralyzed by waves of pain,
thinking this may be the day I die.
My eyes in the mirror catch mine
as if to say good-bye.

The midwife comes to deliver,
probes me with a gloved hand,
looks at me with panicked eyes,
sponging back my sweaty hair.
“I think I’m feeling toes,” she says,
“You need a doctor’s care.”

In the hospital emergency room
I wait in a wheelchair,
answering the admission clerk’s questions
until a contraction seizes me again.
I see her eyes pop wide with surprise
before I slump into the pain.

Legs spread on the hard table,
a masked doctor tells me when to push.
I latch onto his eyes, kind and steady,
until a boy is born, blue as the sky.
When they whisk him into the ICU
I’m thinking my baby may die.

He was born face first, not breech,
and stayed too long in the birth canal.
The nurses won’t bring him to me,
so I dry the tears in my eyes
and push my IV through the cold halls
to the incubator where he lies.

The nurse there yields to my insistence.
She sets me in a rocking chair,
places the baby in my arms, and I fall
into his solemn eyes, like an ancient man’s,
telling me he’s traveled far, he is strong,
and happy to be in this strange new land.

The Sharpshooter

Our father
shot family photos.
The early years on slides
we watched again and again
like a favorite movie.

Our father
shot big-antlered bucks,
always killed with one clean shot.
His trophies appeared in the slideshow
between gap-toothed grins and Christmas mornings.

Our father
collected arrowheads—
a bullet box filled with delicate points
carefully wrapped in cotton—
that he found on rocky hilltops.

Our father
collected our wounded hearts
in a box he never opened—
lacerated, poisoned by his biting tongue,
sloppily patched with wet kisses.

Our father
charmed both the ladies and the men,
regaling and joking with unmatched wit,
praising and flattering to their faces,
scorning them all behind their backs.

Our father
charmed his children, too, until in anger
he shot his cruel words to draw blood
and violated the hunter’s creed
never to abandon your injured prey.

Cynthia Forbes is a retired teacher and instructional designer living in Houston, Texas. She writes poetry, fiction and nonfiction.