The quote below is derived from science literature about a recent discovery on fetal cell duration in the mother’s body. This amazing scientific fact inspired the poem that follows entitled, “Things They Left Us”
‘Scientists have recently revealed that a mother's bloodstream contains not only her own cells, but a small number of her child's as well, and some may remain in her internal organs decades after the baby is born. Scientists discovered cells from fetal boys and girls have been found in mothers "four to five decades following the last pregnancy." That fetus may have grown into a middle aged pharmacist, and still his cells are inside his mother.’
Things
They Left Us
We
live among our dead;
We
mothers of lost children;
Carry
their remnant DNA inside us;
In
uterine lining, heart and brain;
Haunting
our very cells.
Viscerally
present but not visible;
Unavailable
to touch but forever felt.
For
postpartum eternity we carry them.
They
will never leave us. Yet they are gone.
This
is another way we hold them that is beyond control.
It
cannot be willed away through determination or purpose.
It
is empirical reality. It is physical fact, this flesh of my flesh.
You
left yourself with me before permanently leaving my sight.
How
could I not grieve you forever?
Forever Your Mother
4/19/13
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