The Pygmy Giant

by E A M Harris

Yesterday my friend told me about her friend.
‘I knew him,’ she said, ‘many years ago.
He married a girl I used to know.
I introduced them.
Only three weeks’ courtship, then
they moved in with her mother.
She died;
giving birth.’
‘How awful,’ said I, ‘what happened to the child?’
‘As far as I know,’ she said, ‘it died.’

I felt a pang, somewhere in my lower chest,
for a man I’ve never met,
a thirty year old death,
a failed birth.

–

E A M Harris is just starting out on her writing career.