A Prose Poem Inspired by “Quicksand“by Nella Larson 

(A first line too sad to add. Might I choose the second.)

“Last and hardly had she left her bed and become able to walk again without pain hardly have the children return from the homes of the neighbors where she began to have her fifth child.

Grace, Hope, Faith, Destiny, and finally Joy, her fifth and final child would be born on the summer solstice.  

Her last baby girl  born at home in the arms of a midwife. 

Joy was her precious miracle child, born on an auspicious day. 

Also a new moon, when the tides were low, long before the pregnant strawberry full moon came to term. 

She had blue violet eyes unlike her siblings who all had chocolate hued irises to match, truffle, caramel ,hazel flecked with sunflower gold & green and, blackberry brown, a pool of midnight unlike Joy ,who was born with an entirely different. hue. 

She was born in a veil.

She was born in the amniotic sac in tact. Her tiny palms as fine as the Japanese maple in new bloom of the early spring.

She was tiny and as perfect as  a grain of rice. She had a birthmark unlike the others.

Unlike the distinctive port wine stain of her second oldest sister Hope, or the freckles of the oldest, Grace she had a tear shaped like her mother. unlike the Milky Way that was found on the base of her third sister. Faith’s lower leg.

Joy was born without her father in the room. 

He came in right after she broke the veil and she cried a piercing scream the moment she came out of her mothers womb.

Her life was not predestined, she was the first to be born free, this was not prophesied like the rest.

 

All rights reserved copyright (c) 2019 Natasha Vanover