Womb
I remember wading
in my mother’s womb
Her broken water,
screams and dilation
for the end
of a new beginning
I was made from the softest part of her
The curve and gelital walls of her belly
The whisper in the middle of the night
The music of her breath clouding its way
to my uninformed lung
Instruction on how to
Breath in
Breath out
On how to
Let go
When I float in the membrane question of who I am
I go back to the face framed by
the icing crust of the bathroom mirror
Her teeth a door left open
The oak ocean of her skin
Enough to wait in
Eyes like uncertain moons
peering behind clouds
I pedaled into her for
Pieces of prophecy
Will I look like my mother,
Will I look like my mother,
Will I look like my mother ?
How could I ever be as beautiful
And not know it
I don’t know what
daughter is suppose to be
I have left daughter slammed in the door
of the house I grew up in
I left daughter in the space between
‘Where I stay’ and ‘Where I’m from’
There I am river curling around a Ohio wilderness
I am a wave cringing from my own Lake Michigan shore
I am a current flowing
Back to her body of water
I stand braced against
The four walls that surround her and I
Don't know what to make
Of this house
Where boxes go missing
Where I have locked myself out
And returned in shadows
There she knows me
Even when I avoid the mirror
Silhouette framed by the molding
The cracks in her spine
Fit the shape of my side
Maybe she’ll teach me
How to carry