Sometimes birth, sometimes not.

[ Sometimes birth, sometimes not. ]

the self is...wine and honey mixed, now a horse, now a bed of flowers...

I am beginning my seventh month of pregnancy when my boyfriend calls to tell me I have died in my sleep. Inside me, the air, as well as the ocean, goes from warm to hot. My eyes become violent and beautiful. My thighs are moved easily to pity. My lip's a quiver. The voice has destroyed the layer of the future; I get the message. I burst out laughing. That’s what that feeling did, it made me shiver; it made me dead.

Take dawn. Take today. Take miles of red lilies breathtakingly tall. Were this my window-view I would end with an image of absence. I would end with my eyes on the ceiling, draped in a white bedspread. I would kiss your hand,

sordidly. I am at the cinema, observing the secret spleen of time itself and; the plot is contained in its intervals, the plot is the most intimate and disinterested, so full of silence, I experience the mortality of thought. I fling back the covers. The question hovers, the curtain drops. The baby, kicks.

I am beginning my seventh month of pregnancy, in sorrow, when my boyfriend calls to tell me he has died in his sleep. Were I to call him, I would begin with nascency, I would begin with concept, I would begin. Redemption as it comes, suddenly, or not at all. I sit on the couch and take his hand. My collection of glass fingerbowls becomes more expensive. I open my mouth and I can remember, suddenly, how I came to believe in God. Dismantled.

I turn back into an ordinary person.

The self is beginning its seventh month of pregnancy when I begin my seventh month of pregnancy. After a few unusual moments of silence, it is obvious; no one has died in his or her sleep. I burst out laughing, uncontrollably. I embellish taxonomy with my laughter. I had not spoken to the self in several years so we’d forgotten the sound of desire. Thus my breast. My hair grows long and is pecan-colored, threatening its hold over me. It is a waste of words to disclose small gleaming details. My boyfriend braids my hair. I begin to weep.

I am beginning my seventh month of pregnancy trying to protect something. After I fall asleep, my boyfriend (and I) make love. That's what we did. Panic ensues. It felt nice. I am beginning my seventh month of pregnancy after a few weeks of beginning my seventh month of pregnancy. To which I respond, "inside the mysteries of the body I see sensation." "A development," my boyfriend says finally. Tiny images of legs hairs, with no consistent theme, suggesting all sorts of things. It is early spring.

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where we measure silence

[ where we measure silence ]

Mary Magdalene lays on the ground and pretends autumn tracked her down. But thank you for the beautiful book that you gave me. To which she replied: good evening, this is my body, my wild battle with the twigs, I dream my son, I can leave anytime. Thank you to the very existence of the willow leaves in the garden. Thank you to the other meaning of maroon. I desire a dream of being dead, dressing my final body in a screen of moonflowers. Once upon a time, in fact, I opened the book skyward amidst the scentless leaves, curled into claws, falling. How to tell you now, I have become a story, become bones, become a misunderstanding of this birch's shade. So much flowering in the autumn midair. Which is when she touched her bed of moss, solemnly. Which is when she imagines, I suppose, his hands deep, her mouth a plum blossom moaning in the mud. Heaven in a simple way. A dream not big enough for a heart, I fell asleep in. The blur of leaves made the wind pick up; I tried to climb down from the tree, then I tried to study rain. It's always raining. From a distance, I watched myself climb down, speaking calmly about how I love you. Beautiful Mary, why don't you answer. Your sleeping turns my heart into a pair of crows. I hold my chest. My wounds close up before you reach up for a kiss.

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Poem quotes and/or paraphrases, in part, both Nick Flynn's book of poems, "Some Ether," and Araki Yasusada's e-Book, "Doubled Flowering."