Strangers In The Night Poem by Cheryl Lynn Moyer Peele

We were buried in charity: clothes, food and toys
after the fire took our home and your crib.
You had only slumbered in this world one night.
The dew still on your eyelids, when the smoke
began to fill our lungs. My husband; an actor, a tenor
could not abide children. So I had left, to paint your
life yellow, with daisies, and eager drips of paint.
“An abortion, ” he had demanded, and even
as I nodded my head, I knew it would be
you, not him that would be laying his head upon
my breast. As I kissed the dew away, you
learned to breathe in the cool night air,
familiar strangers holding us aloft.