Channel Esther: What Life Looks Like

by Esther Cohen

YESTERDAY I was sitting in a meeting
for the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire
commemoration meeting
if all meetings could be like theirs I would go
to more meetings yesterday I was
thinking about all the young girls who
died in that fire and what life is
my phone pinged (most people say dinged
but dinged doesn’t seem right)
and I looked at the picture in the text
a sonogram from Noah hard to tell
what it was just a sonogram this is
my daughter Noah said and I left
the meeting and started to cry
what does life look like how
it happens how quickly it goes away
this brown rectangle is my granddaughter
that’s all I know about her that she
is 20 weeks old more or less
she will have a life I can only hope
a very good life and that we
will watch her live we will
listen to her stories
tell her some of ours.

Esther Cohen writes a poem every day at her blog, “I Am and I Am Not.”