The day my daughter overdosed
on unrestrained nortriptyline,
all thought dispersed like filmy ghosts
afraid of ICU machines.

Six days my haunted vigil stretched
beside her comatose abyss,
devoid of reason, will, or self–
a graveyard for gaunt manuscripts.

Amid the dark recovery
that disinterred cold skeletons,
stiff rhymes became my therapy
and she transformed– reborn a son.

Despite his newfound happiness
and zest for life I’d never seen,
the phantom novel grew abcessed
beneath a stack of poetry.

Our dual awakenings
sloughed off unyielding zombie cauls;
alive with nerve, encores begin–
and now my words earn peer applause.