She Was Beautiful

Mikhail Palinchak

Whispers...
Don't wake her,
Let her rest.

Whispers....
Don't tell her,
She's not ready.

Whispers awakened her
From a drug induced
Slumber.

She listens
For a voice
So familiar
It could have been her own.

A voice
Cooing at a child,
Smiling in it's vibrations
Making promises
It will keep,
Making promises
It can never keep.

This voice was not there
Among the whispers,
And yet she yearned
To hear this voice.

The slumber was thick
And yet she swam
To the surface
Using all she could summon
To break the surface
To break the slumber.

As her eyelids fluttered
A strong hand
Grasped her hand,
Pulling her through
To the real world.

He sat at her bedside,
A face as familiar
As her own.
And with her eyes
She asked the question
He was afraid to answer.

"She was beautiful."

It was the word
Was
That plunged her back
Into the abyss of dreams
And unrealized wishes,
Leaving her there
For a day,
Or was it two.

When she woke,
Those words roused her.

When she slept,
Those words were her lullaby.

No child
Rested in her arms,
Once nestled in her womb.

No child
Suckled at her bosom,
Now heavy with sustenance.

No child
To cry out
For her mother.

Time waits for no one,
And days pass,
Then weeks and months
And soon a year
Had come and gone.

Soon another child
Filled her womb
And this child was born,
And then another,
And then another.

Three children
Had rested in her arms,
Suckled at her bosom
And cried out to her,
Their mother.

And when asked
About the fourth
She would say,
"She was beautiful."