When they handed you to me
I couldn’t reach out and hold you,
I froze.
A tiny bag of red skin with a bruised head
from when they vacuumed you out of my body
I wish I did take you,
that’s what a mother in a Hollywood film would have done;
take her screaming, alien like, slimy, blooded baby into her arms and kiss her.
That’s what a mother cat would have done; lick the slime off her kitten’s fur.
There, on the awkward delivery chair, my head hung like Christ
my thighs wide apart, my wound pouring blood, delivering my broken placenta
every bone in my body shifted out of its place in revolution of pushing you out
every bit of me gave you.
