Near Misses and Narrow Escapes
poetry by LeAnne Hunt
Near Misses and Narrow Escapes
By fire, by fall, by drowning—
from each I was saved.
I stopped breathing, they say.
My baby blue face
swallowed my parents’ hearts.
Their gasps—perhaps—
restarted my lungs.
A litany of almosts.
Close calls that stopped ringing
before I could pick up.
I suppose I dodged a bullet, sometime.
Some night I must have passed
beside a drunk or sleeper
hurtling metal
along a razor strip of road.
And we did not meet.
A piece of satellite or shuttle
must have floated above my head
but stayed aloft.
Some curse from a forgotten god
dropped from the heavens
or was shot from a bow.
I sidestepped,
but my son did not.
I survived that too.
Choice
poetry by LeAnne Hunt
Choice​
My daughter asks if I love her.
To my yes, she replies
I have to love her
that it is simple biology—
that the DNA of our cells
wouldn’t let me do otherwise.
I tell her that I wouldn’t choose any other—
that I cannot imagine loving another more.
She replies that it is only because
she is all I have ever known.
I don’t remind her of her brother—
his small, sweet smile
like the honeycomb
of an abandoned hive—
that if he hadn’t been diagnosed
in February as futile
and delivered breathless,
her conception in July couldn’t have occurred.
His early delivery to the dark
emptied my womb and my life for her.
His silence as he slid out of my body
opened the door for her to come
screaming into my world,
though she decided to enter backwards,
and an exit had to be cut.
She had seemed angry to leave my watery nest
but now is furious that I try to still her wings
beating to fly away from me.
She says that of course I have to love her
that I don’t know any other way.
She blames me, she says, for her father
that she never asked to be born.
She never had a choice.
I don’t tell her neither did I.
LeAnne Hunt
LeAnne Hunt (she/her) grew up in the Midwest and now lives in Orange County, California. She is a regular at the Two Idiots Peddling Poetry reading at the Ugly Mug in Orange. She has poems published in Black Napkin Press, Rabid Oak, and Lullaby of Teeth: An Anthology of Southern California Poets. She publishes a blog of writing prompts at https://leannehunt.com/.