Cora pressed the photograph to her chest and swiped her tears from her eyes with the back of her hand. Andrew was a dimple-cheeked cutie. According to his mother’s latest letter he was happy, reasonably healthy, had an elephant’s appetite for peanut butter sandwiches, and loved peddling his tryke up and down the sidewalk in front of his house.

Time to put Andrew where Andrew belongs. Cora gripped the doorknob. It’s only a room. She took a deep breath, opened the door, and flipped on the light switch.

The nursery remained unfinished.

A changing table was still ready to assemble in its unopened box. Pieces of a mahogany crib rested against a far wall.

Michael’s first and last blankets, one patterned in red sailboats, the other marked with teddy bears embroidered in blue, lay folded on top of the dresser beside the rocking chair. The chair’s mauve-colored cushions were still sealed in their original protective plastic.

She’d prayed for a miracle, an obstetrician who could give the little bump that shared her waistline a pair of kidneys, make her son whole when he was new.

What she’d received were packages of diapers and tissue-stuffed gift bags, given by co-workers and friends who’d never known the anxiety that came with her impending motherhood ran deeper than whether or not the life inside her had ten fingers and ten toes.

Michael’s Baby Book of Moments was the only gift she’d used. In it she'd taped a photo of Michael, pink and almond-eyed, his tiny forehead pressed against her breast. It was taken moments before a neo natal surgical team whisked him away to claim the pieces fit to dole. Where he was going he didn’t need toy sailboats or teddy bears in blue. The blankets were left behind, draped over the plastic bassinet beside her hospital bed.

Cora lifted the Baby Book of Moments off the dresser and settled herself cross-legged on the carpet. There, on page one, was her short lived, shining star. She ran her thumb along the edge of Michael’s picture. Proof he had been real, and alive, and for an hour belonged to her.

She peeled back the corner of the cover sheet on the third page and placed Andrew’s photo in the birthday slot.

He wasn’t the miracle she’d dreamed about when the red x’s on the calendar counted down her scheduled delivery day, but he was the something out of nothing. A dimple-cheeked cutie who carried the beat of Michael’s perfectly formed heart.

He watched her in her deepest sleep

he wandered life with her,

and felt the cold chill of lonesome pangs

as he wondered life without her,

it stretched his heart and made it brittle

as he groped with this, her final bed

he resisted but it was to no avail

he watched her in her deepest sleep

beneath whose sheets he’d reach at will

fulfill love’s need and lustful greed

secrets lay there within those folds,

he watched her in her deepest sleep

when they first had met,

she was an autumn field in country roads

and yellow mustard mixed with sunflower,

honeybees and meadowlark’s song

in sage filled foothills with creeks

lined with cottonwoods

she was his

she won his heart in those sunlit skies

in her bright white dress

a little past her upper knees

to show her gorgeous legs

her bright red lips without lipstick

her eyes as bright as emeralds

so green pristine as crystal, he could see

within her soul past it deep

where only God can see

he knew she was for him

he watched her in her deepest sleep

now here she lays in shallow breaths

in shadows dim, this low lit room

upon her final bed

he watched her in her deepest sleep

a reminisced mix of pain and joy,

she had been elixir to his lifeless veins

given him reason to fully give,

to become a willful sacrifice

where no one else ever could

to what she said and craved

he watched her in her deepest sleep

he wished to tell her, hold her now

and say, “I miss you, please don’t go,”

he saw a feeble shallow rise,

her weakened chest imperceptible to all

except his eyes slowly marking time,

ticking down her final breaths

of life’s clock for her to be with him

he watched her in her deepest sleep

remembered place and circumstance

when they first met,

a place of selfless dreams through life

in this crippled world

their souls became entwined

though some scoffed and spat,

“their love won’t last, won’t pass the test

they’ll soon shed each other’s love and

take second best,”

he watched her in her deepest sleep

smiled softly with the ebbing of her life

he knew a shell she would soon become

when then a smile he waxed,

how six decades joined proved all them wrong

and how they remained as one

despite strife’s struggles and arguments

in this crippled world,

he watched her in her deepest sleep

his thoughts became again sweet honeycomb

when placed his mind

on when they’d meet again,

resolved her days were spent,

he saw her breaths were gone

to the final one, soon to die

before he left the room

before again, he would ever see

her autumn fields in country roads

and yellow mustard

mixed with sunflower,

honeybees and meadowlark’s song

in sage filled foothills with creeks

lined with cottonwoods

watching him as he slept