For the mothers lost

It wasn't enough to ask me how I felt, and just accept the answer. You could've looked into my eyes and seen the fear if you really wanted to. I just wanted you to go away. You did.

It doesn't happen over time, but any time. Especially times when the balance of chemicals in your body has suddenly capsized you into the sea, when the eyes of your world are looking to you to be, to feel, to know, to love. But you can't be, you can't feel, you don't know, you're not love. You're not a who or a where; only a why. An unanswered question somewhere amongst the pages.

Every minute is longer than the last. Nobody comes when you call; you can't hear your own voice out loud. You look for familiarity in blank walls and find sharp edges and painful silence instead. A piece of your heart is hanging from your body but you can't open your eyes to find it. You hear someone reading the words of a book you once wrote, in a language you've never heard; you don't understand why. You are not how you were. Clouds of smoke. There is nothing beyond this pinpoint of black in your eye. 

Thoughts you never expected, spirals of sickness that left unchecked can suck you down and hold you under until you know that it will stop once you allow the water to fill your lungs - you're finally warm and as you drown you look up to see their faces rippled by the surface of the water, and hear their voices grow far away. 

You were just there with them, holding him, holding her, and now you're standing on a platform with the wind burning your eyes and words falling off your lips and it's so hard but so easy to slip away because this is a dream. A bad dream.

This is how it feels. This is how it's possible to go from birth to death with nothing in between. And this is why it isn't enough to ask how she feels and just accept the answer.