After The Phone Call Poem by Sarita Brown

after all the time she spent on it,
you would have thought
she could recognise a dead baby
when she saw one.

but she just kept blowing air into his lungs, like he
wanted to breathe or
even cared to be alive.
she propped him in a chair.
she fed him food he never tasted.
she gave him kisses he never felt.

in the end, he resented her insistence on
living or love or passion.
he spit his dead baby spit in her eye and
told her to
go to hell.

sometimes you have to let dead things lie.
let them be dead.
give them a proper burial
quit pretending that there was
anything there but an empty house
with no one home.
quit wasting your love on a dead thing.