Lost
Lost
by Alexandra Batson
The room sits untouched:
Purple,
The color of grape cotton candy.
A rocking chair in the corner
Waits
For its first rock.
There’s a changing table
Where no baby’s diaper
Will be changed.
In the dark closet
Dresses hang,
like corpses,
untouched,
Bought too soon;
Outfits that have been abandoned
like the mother,
and won’t be worn in this house,
Maybe resold to another family,
To a different baby girl.
Upstairs,
The house is quiet;
The baby
Lies still
In her belly.
This reminds me a little bit too much of that 6 word story by Hemmingway: “For sale: baby shoes, never worn.” Even so, it sets the mood effectively, and adds other interesting dimensions (e.g. “Outfits that have been abandoned / like the mother …”) that give emotional depth and complexity – even if the last stanza spells things out a little more explicitly than it should.