Mother

if god is, then god is mother

a father may love, but a father doesn’t pull from his own flesh

to give muscles and bones

a father doesn’t rend himself in two

doesn’t watch as a face, a neck, a body emerges from himself

see the skin formed from his cells

nourished by his body

learn to walk away from him

 

a mother is heavy

a heaviness that spans every generation of human history

the millions, the billions

more than stars in the night sky

how can I ever again walk alone?

with this creator’s weight, your life, your death

written in blood and amniotic fluid across my palms

in a few minutes of exquisite out-of-body body rupturing

I’ve crossed the chasm again into a blissful life sentence,

a halving of self,

a terrible knowing that every step for the remainder of my life

is taken in shoes filled with smooth grey stones

 

(this tactile agony smudged by shit beneath fingernails,

tiny macaroni digging into elbows,

unbrushed teeth, undrunk tea,

hair crusted with vomit

and half-eaten apples filling fruit bowls)