NaPoWriMo #14 - What of the child that lived?

What of the child that lived?

The dead child died                     The living child grew up
twenty three years ago                loved? grandchildren?
she mourns daily                          well-mannered, studious
every detail, as                             novelist? surgeon? drunkard?
nuance of her loss                        we don't know
gilded in memory                          she doesn't say
such sorrow preserved                only one child
in poetry clung to                           is spoken of
as if there was nothing                 no one else
nothing else                                   to live for


The prompt was to write a cleave poem that could be read across or down each column....  I read this prompt early this morning and got nowhere. But this evening I heard a poet read who had lost a child and her specialty (even after 23 years),  is grief poems for the dead child. She is so much associated with this subject  she is even giving a workshop on the topic. Yet none of the poems  include redemption or healing, even the newest poems, which are still on the same subject.  And she did mention she had two children, but she didn't read any poems for the child that lived who must be all grown up by now. (I am sure there must be some poems for the other child). I just thought this situation would lend itself to the cleave form  -- with one child for each column, the two columns together for the mother.......