Seams
When I was younger I’d dream of birth,
huge and swollen, reaching down and reeling, feeling the head emerge from me,
me pulling the baby out and joyful and tear-streaked in the dream,
presenting the child to my mother.
She would be so proud.
Real life far more real and unreal and a body so huge,
waves of red blinding pain cracking me round the middle as if I were some kind of walnut,
a kind of pain ripping and large a feeling that took me outside myself
watching me being lifted and taken
every
two minutes
and still I would not open.
The greatest pleasure the absence of pain, ahhhhhh epidural,
as doctors and midwives scurried, reaching arms, wrists inside me to check on my progress,
and liquid running, gushing from me,
hot and loud and my blushing from the dark nastiness and glory of it all.
I was truly a virgin until that point.
Finally, mind cracked open by 30 hours and pain,
and my heart, cracked wide by truth,
I opened, then.
