Backward Mutters

The Poetry Pub’s Day 13, prompt was “eye contact.” Here’s my response to the prompt, and it is offered in light of the fact that November is Diabetes Awareness Month.

The poem is a recollection of the day my daughter was diagnosed with Type 1 Diabetes which is an autoimmune disease that attacks the pancreas and leaves the individual insulin dependent. For many years it was called Juvenile Diabetes because the disease most often manifest in children.

Our daughter was seven when she was diagnosed. Here’s a picture of her in the ER awaiting admission to the hospital. It was December 7.

I remember that evening in Brenner’s
When I gave you the first shot of thousands
Of doses of insulin. How with
Trembling heart I resolved to see done
What must be done. And you? You braced yourself
To see to what you must do.
Make no mistake it was still a shot 
With alcohol swab and drawn syringe--
A fact that, on me, was not lost.
We looked each in the eye, and we knew
We had to.

I rubbed the spot and pushed the needle in;
Then, finished with fear and pain and tears,
We went to play in the playroom where you
Looked for something special to relieve—
Assuage the painful news of the day.
Your eye fixed on the inflated, plastic
ScoobyDoo Punching Bag and you
Hauled off and beat that bag
As if you had to. That’s when I knew
We saw things eye to eye.

© 2022 Randy Edwards