that woman

when we pulled up to the hospital
a woman was being wheeled out to her car
carrying her newborn baby,
wrapped in a pink blanket.

i knew i would not be carrying my baby out of the hospital,
even though i had a pink blanket
because i knew my baby had died.

that woman was carrying what i never would,
and she didn’t know it.

and that woman was the beginning
of my separation from this world
from them and me
from alive and dead
from before and after

and sometimes i still think of that woman,

as i clutch my baby’s blanket
and howl into the wind.