Angel Baby

Dark curls cluster, cling,

'round your sweet face.

Your eyes are closed now.

Are they blue or brown?

 

Precious rosebud mouth,

lips just parted;

yet no breath is exhaled.

All is still, silent.

 

No roses touch your cheeks;

just chalk white skin

marked by livid bruises,

in every hue of pain.

 

Your brief life

has been one of suffering;

witnessed by broken bones

in varied healing stages;

and untold layers of bruise.

 

The very ones

who gave you life,

destroyed that life.

She stood, unspeaking,

while he "disciplined" you to death.

Author's Note

The autopsy report came back on a 17 month old whose mother never spoke up while the father abused the child for all his short life un til his little body could no longer bear the pain. The mother had NOT been abused.

Reviews

[NoneOfYourBusiness akaK..]

my heart bleeds faster with each stanza opening a bruised life~human behaviour will always be beyond my comprehension~

[raining]

it is very true, this poem. sadness. the child is gone away and there is nothing we can do. only stop the next and the next and the next until it is stopped.

i suggeswt it might work for you to have a transitional positiong in the stanzas in the middle from the description to the declarative stating. the last two stanzas are strong i think, you can trust the reader to know about the second stanza, so right there is there another element to the story you could add? (don't at all mean to be preachy, just getting in to your poem)
I have the problem of adding more words than needed, everyone has a "thing" that they don't always see...