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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