Metamorphosis

Metamorphosis

There was a time when I never thought I would ever finish school. I floundered from job to job, never really knowing what I wanted to do. I never realized that I had put up such tall, well-built fences around myself. I kept myself hidden from the outside, and mostly hidden from myself. There was a time when I hid the deepest parts, even from other parts of me. In one paper for this semester, I wrote about the friction between myself and myself. I think there’s more to add to that statement, for everyone who has ever examined herself closely, painfully aware of what may possibly be lurking in the shadows. Everyone tucks memories, experiences, thoughts away for later examination, or possibly forever. Sometimes these experiences are never heard from again, but simply tucked into the wrinkles of our brains for building our character. Whether they are used consciously in the future or not, they form the foundation of who we are. The subconscious is a mysterious thing, and I don’t pretend to know much about it. But I have learned a little about myself through these experiences of writing and searching through those dusty files.

In a poem I wrote for a class two semesters ago, I examined what it was like to perform CPR on a four-year-old boy. It was heart-wrenching at the time, and I wrote down the raw feelings from that day on a piece of scratch paper, put it in my pocket and worked the painful feelings and perspectives into a poem. I turned it in for a grade and put it aside, kept it in a file from that class only to stumble across it about a week ago. That poem knocked the wind out of me, even after a year of distance. I’ve posted it below.

Sunday Morning
An Epitaph

All over this frozen city, people
are lying in bed sipping
steaming coffee, clipping coupons,
or making love
to ward off the February chill.

Here I stand alone, drowning.
There is no Sunday romance for me
as I batter this little boy’s chest.
Reasoning, bargaining.

I sliced this baby’s jammies
off with my own cold
sterile steel in slow motion
as the world fast-forwards.

Poise.
Brace.
Pump.
That’s my job.

“Start CPR!”
“Push Epi!”
“Do it again, harder!”
“Make the beat count!”

Fiery tears threaten, recede
as I stare blankly at beeping screen.
Four years old, no life left.
Lying on a slab, blue
jammies flayed open.

“Stop CPR.”
Breath heaving from the effort, I glance down-
look at his face. Warm mahogany
irises watch, done.
And I touch a gloved hand to soft brown hair.

Baby, keep fighting. I’m fighting with you.
Monitors slow to a final halt,
Cold, silent.

I shut it down, roar inside.
The clock stopped softly, 10 a.m.
I ran - knelt, rocked
alone in a sterile bathroom-
Screamed, shattered mirrors.
Because the funeral march breaks

Inside my head for the little
boy in sliced blue pajamas.

While all over this frozen city, people
are lying in bed sipping
steaming coffee, clipping coupons,
or making love
to ward off the February chill.


I never noticed the depth of feelings when I read it the first few times to myself, and then to a class of my peers. I was terrified to read it aloud, afraid that my readers wouldn’t understand why I wrote it the way I did, or that the material was so extreme that people couldn’t identify with it. My class was so diverse that I thought surely I would offend someone, or that they would find me crazy. I don’t know what I was afraid of, but I was afraid, and when I read it aloud the class was silent. Then I looked around to my classmates’ faces and realized one woman was crying, and several others were tearing up as well. The men were moved, and everyone took something from my written experience. The point is, that was the first time I had ever opened myself up by reading aloud to an audience. I was unsure of what I was looking for, but I began to find out that I was seeking the ability to open up a part of my life and air out those dark spaces, and reopen the memories that had been locked away in the dark.