by Emily von Stetten
Admiring a lovely little autumn
bird flying upon the young ultrasounds, she
chose‒ as always ‒ to see the positive light over this
dawning novelty, knowing it was right, still
Ella tries to breathe away her foggy thoughts of
fear and joy, which come and
go with the rhythm of the waves provoked by the
heated, swollen lake foreshadowing the
initial ‒ for sure not last‒ pain, when suddenly:
Jiggle … Jerk … Jiggle … Jerk …
knocking on the cold ground her
limbs mould the greyish shades of the stones,
meanwhile mummy’s voice whispered: “Ella, look, there, a lovely little
nightingale, wake up, you will miss it” but
on the cold ground her head turned round and round, triggering a
panic reversing her stomach upside-down:
quick a bench where she can faintly
rest, letting the palpitating memory
slow down in the knocking chest, while
tenderly putting her hands on the fading belly
underneath the red injured coat, she grasped the
vanishing life and though her weakness she
wonders if the union of
X and whys would have changed the
yellowness of her soul, but there she left the
zest, the open cage remains hollow
until somewhere else, the seasons reversed
Zoey (the Greek Jewish translation of Eve)
yawned on her hospital bed, while her body was
X-rayed, again, in order to check the
wanderlust of her blooming cancer (stage IV):
visible was only the soft skin of her deserted cranium
underlining her intense sea-sight,
that veiled the weakness of her body and revealed the
sturdiness of her spirit, which
rarely embraced moments of complaint,
quite rarely, even if she knew she would
probably die of this miscarriage ‒as she called it‒ so
only her job at the Women’s Health Center
nursing broken souls would help her to
manage these muddy therapies, those she mulled over
later this day while strolling down the well
known lakeside, listening to the
joyful psalms of nightingales ‒ her favourite ‒ when suddenly, she stopped
instinctively concerned by the folded shape of young woman, whom she found
helpless and in a disastrous state, and
guessing the urgency, she took her
faithfully to the acquainted hospital, where
Ella’s life could be saved and where Zoey’s deepest
desire was enliven: she promised herself as long as she could, she would
care for the unfortunate loss ‒she could never experience‒, giving
birth to a sprouting friendship, that unconsciously started to heal their
autumnal conditions.