The Family in the Waiting Room Wants More - 2nd Revision

[71degrees]

Thanks for your reading and your kind words. I appreciate your suggestions. I used "slowly, wordlessly exhaled" because I was trying to echo the theme of from the first stanza "although it can no longer speak" and the "language of the body" that is then repeated at the end with "speak the language of death". I think soundlessly is good, maybe "finally" - though I thought that was a bit melodramatic, which I was trying to avoid. The "my bones aching now and old" is referring to how tired and old and worn out and defeated I would feel as a doctor when I knew that there was nothing left to be done to help a patient and then had to relay that news to the family. I'll think about other ways to word it and give it another try.

thanks again

Don't get too carried away w/all this "help"...it's still your poem. This poem is not "melodramatic"...it is not "schmaltzy" at all. Too much tinkering and you could lose that fine line. Adverbs are a bane. BIG difference between a body that's "wordless" and the way it "wordlessly" exhales. Think about each modifier. You are describing a highly personal experience of "before" and "after" I see this poem as all about you, not about the child or the parents. Cut even more words: (e.g. "this" line 5 and "neat" line 6. They add nothing except another beat.) Quit trying to describe death so "neatly"...

I really like the changes to stanza one.