Soulless
What would I have called you
beneath that hospital light,
while I stood there, scarcely more than air,
and your hand closed round my finger tight?
Through diapers, crying, sleepless dread,
I paced on fraying nerves;
then your mountains, suns, in crayon lines,
gave more than I deserved.
I watched myself return in you,
my temper in your eyes,
then watched love take you past my reach,
and still admired your defiance.
Ingeborg—more than you could know,
a name I hold too near;
the daughter I raised inside my mind,
a woman now, twenty-one this year.