Forceps Delivery by Pat Hale

Forceps Delivery

You see, I could not push.

I was too hopeless, too exhausted.
Needed just a moment
to catch my breath, to rest,
but the doctor said, now, push.
There would be no resting.
She didn’t know my heart
was broken, that it was the source
of my utter weakness.
Nobody did. Not yet.

There are things you can’t see
unless you know where to look.
The doctor just grumbled and snipped
so I wouldn’t tear. Surgical scissors.
Too late. I was already broken.

She called the forceps “blades,”
a word that made me avert my eyes.
I told the nurses to turn the mirror
so I wouldn’t have to watch
those broad metal tongs enter into me
or see the blood flowing out.

I did not see my son being born,
just heard the doctor mutter,
don’t they teach these girls anything
in those childbirth classes?
She wanted to let me know I had failed
at this one simple task set before me.
You’ve left a big mess
for me to clean up, the doctor said.
Then she got to the stitching,
pulling the visible bits of me
back together.

*

Pat Hale’s publications include “Seeing Them with My Eyes Closed,” (published by Grayson Books) and “Composition and Flight” (published by the Hill-Stead Museum). Her prize-winning poems appear in Calyx, Connecticut River Review, Naugatuck River Review, and many other journals, and have been anthologized in “Forgotten Women,” “Waking Up to the Earth: Connecticut Poets in a Time of Global Climate Crisis,” and elsewhere. She lives in Connecticut in a little house surrounded by tall trees, and serves on the board of directors for the Riverwood Poetry Series.