The Old Pathologist

I hold him
in my arms
as if he were
the remnants
of the baby au-
topsy he did
that day
in 1990
when I lost
those forty pages
of my writing
to the broken harddrive.
And looked, as he said,
as stricken
as the infant's mother
when the doctor said:
Your child is dead.

Now his head in my lap,
I stroke his brow and kiss his lips.
Our tears fill each other's mouths
as we gasp for sounds of one more tomorrow
and give us back our yesterdays.

-Esther Altshul Helfgott