Her Dress

I found a tiny dress in my closet today. It had been covered by a white plastic bag and was burried between a coat I wore during pregnancy and one I had outgrown then. A woman who owns a bed and breakfast in Colorodo made it by hand. She makes tiny dresses and bonnets for children at her local NICU - dresses and bonnets in which the babies are sometimes burried. When Amaly was dying, our friend, Nancy, the carnio sacral therapist who was helping Amaly had it made for her. The little dress resembles one a child might be christened in, with its glistening white cotton and slight touches of lace and pink ribbon. Today as I pulled back the bag and saw it with the eyes of mourning only two and a half years old, the dress made me see once again...

Amaly's whitering body floating
in the dress, a well of
joy fighting to take its
place amidst our misery
as we played dress up
and for this fragment of time
she was royalty - a small princess
that reigned our lives with
love's iron rule
of endurance
where we were an entire pueblo
of loyal subjects scrambling
to please her whims
her eyes sparkled in the play of
of the moment
I could not bring myself
to take a picture of her that way
I felt guilty for playing and
feeling such happiness
I simply took it off
tucked our fleeting joy into a bag
with the hope John had given me
that another living child
might wear it again
and resumed to marvel
at my daughter Amaly's beauty
dressed in the dignity of death