The Writing on the Uterus Wall
In the Womb I Leave Graffiti for My Younger Brother
You, lithe swimmer with feet you will use like hands, meet me here—read what I write on the wall of mum’s uterus the way later we will cobalt blue spray the field to mark where to hit, throw, catch whatever it is we try to hold— baseball, whiffle, bug clot or frog race—here it is dark and I have been here before you, so allow me to give you something: she will not ever be yours. You will break the waves looking, breathing into the space left by airplane, foot, abrupt hang up, memory fissures but for now this room, cozy fluid den of safety—see what I left behind? Words in their infancy a blueprint we will not find until this decade but we found it, brother! Think of it: both of us swimming in blankness so dark no lighthouse/flashlight/torch/bonfire can get through and yet here we are, grown and reading and here, too, is my hand. I beg you, take it. In the deep I will hold yours.
Sometimes I Apologize to My Children
and sometimes I break open the pomegranate of my chest holding each membranous seed inside while I consider my children and the ocean of heartache potentially lapping at them in the future made even colder despite global warming’s ruin because they don’t know specifics—death sure maybe they get that but what about loving someone who doesn’t love you back or hurts you or about slack misery jobs or finding chains across your front door because of bills unpaid and, too, the sad bright crocuses blooming in front of that stoop, what about the getting pregnant at the worst time or being unable at the best? What about plain old human cruelty boxed up in elementary construction paper cutting or the adult-sized lunch tables from which one might still be excluded and just what can I say about the underground tracks of desires unmet crossing lines with well, that’s just the way it is— and to think I wanted to ring the bell of joy have it sound out to each of my grown babies so I am sorry for the splitting open of my chest and sorrier still for the mess my seepage and the world slops on you but still, I told you about the crocuses— bright purple and yellow, green so alive it sews you up— I told you that, too, right?