Imagining

Beyond hope,

her sight is fixed

on a time that cannot be,

imagining what lay

in her daughter’s DNA.

She gazes through a haze of sorrow

past eyes that plead,

and dreams

of a world that might have been,

of childhood laughter, and of play.

A life nipped in the bud,

her baby will not bloom.

She rests her child

against her shrivelled breast

and waits.