Thus Spoke My Mother
You will find your way out of me one day,
cradled in your amniotic ark;
you will voyage through
this deluge of fluid and foam.
You, little astronaut
hung from your navel cord
floating between worlds, will kick down
my womb’s walls
and claim the space. You,
seahorse turned Pegasus,
unnamed hero, waiting to become.
You will be ripped out of me one day,
your raw flesh heaving in blood,
dripping red footsteps on the ground.
Eyes closed in rapture, with fists clenched,
you will find deliverance, darling,
wrapped in swaddling clothes,
holding your brown-eyed dolls.
You will transcend,
and I will never be this close to you again,
feeling your heartbeats in my core.
You will be cut out of me one day,
like a limb that never belonged.
And not long after you are gone,
I will become merely what you passed through:
a vacant vessel, a poet without a rhyme.
Your life will begin one day,
when I am empty, undone.
