NICU, For Dominic Edit #2.1

[Leah S.]

NICU, For Dominic

Your first breath holds ours frozen, after all Glitchy - I read it as an inversion at first. Maybe use semi-colons instead for the parenthetical phrase 'after all the weeks you grew inside your mother's womb' ?
the weeks you grew inside your mother's womb,
arriving early with an anxious bawl.
I count the possibilities of doom
and triumph on your toes, my abacus,
as monitors and regulators beep
and flash your vital signs. You mildly fuss
then slip back into artificial sleep;
your dreams a mystery of graphing flares. Checking in: I like this, it's a perfect description of the lit lines on a heart monitor graph, and other's dreams are always a mystery.
I trace fine lines on palms, your future: grand 'fine lines' is a bump for me, how about 'I trace lines on your palms, the future:' ?
achievements, escapades, sweet love affairs...does it have to be 'sweet' ?
your secret strengths read in each tiny hand. Gnarly meter here, the reader has to force it and it makes it jingly.
Although our place does not dictate our worth,
we cannot earn the luck or curse of birth.Something wrong here, it's a little forced. The sense is good, but it needs to pack more of a punch. Suggest tinkering with 'cannot' and "earn' and adding an adjective or two to make clear that it isn't being born itself that is the luck or curse, but the ensuing lifetime.

(I came across this today in our abandoned Crown of Sonnets. Coincidentally a healthy child celebrates his first birthday tomorrow, so I thought I'd honor the miracles of modern medicine by seeing if I can get this to stand alone. So far I've just tweaked the first line, the original can be found here:

Heroic Crown of Sonnets