fresh coffee drips
into the ***
herbs on the stove
begin to boil
blood stained sheets
are now drying
hands and arms are being washed
with hot water
milk drips
from the breast
a wet chord is coiled
the placenta lays tired
here begins
a new life

I went to him before the storm.
The grumbling thunder echoed
my abnormal heartbeat
as I squeezed the hell out of the steering wheel.

I was with him during the storm.
His white lightning fingers traveled
across pink sky flesh
and my reaction struck and shocked me.

I didn’t want him anymore.

So I watched him at the back door instead,
lighting up in the rain,
taking a hit
or two
or three-
instead of me.

My Grandmother owned two bells
and she used them to be heard,
to amplify her aging voice.

The first was black iron
on a post out back.
She pulled on its rope from the porch
and it rang a hard thunder
that shook the land.
It rang to bring him home,
to feed him
leftover *** roast and potatoes from the garden

The second felt fragile
porcelain in the palm of the hand.
A sweet child cling
to ring
when she’s sick in bed.
He would come running with a tray
to feed her,
navy blue socks with holes
walking quickly on a linoleum floor.

My sister painted a picture
of the dead fetus she lost,
at the bottom of our toilet.
Every time I flush, I think
about how hard it must have been
for her to.  

I met him in that painting
and he already knew me.
He’d heard my voice singing show tunes in the car,
tasted the sugar in my key lime pie,
and now his porcelain tombstone is in the blue bathroom.
He grew in the darkness of her womb
like a sunflower seed buried deep in the ground.
He was cradled in nourishing fluid, wet soil-
until breaking ground into the light
into a world of people, already grown.
But when babies stop growing,
people already grown-
have to grow a little more.

I have her legs.
Flaky skin-wood stove induced,
winter pricklies going wild,
and a little bit of mashed potatoes in the thighs.

I saw them hiding
underneath her house coat,
pale and untouched
like the snow covered hill.

It’s in the beeswax candle
that burns
on the kitchen table
next to half empty cups of stale coffee.
It’s in the pure oxygen
that pumps
in and out of her weakened heart.
I can hear it in Judy Garland’s velvet voice
singing her to sleep
in the background.
I feel it in her goodbye grip.
I can see it in her relieved eyes,
her dropped jaw.

It’s something new and rarely real.
It lets her live a life imagined,
a life where rubies join in rows
and diamonds have no flaws.
Tired women with worn soles
can possess a hand of luxury-
a new ring.

It’s been two months and you are still giving me things.
This time I inherited your long tan coat.
The one you wore along with a plastic bag on your head
when it was raining.
The one that swooshed when your arms swung back and forth
while the long belt would drag
along the ground on one side.
The one nobody wanted.

I slid my arms into the sleeves
and felt the sleek fabric hug my skin,
unlike the way it hung
from your frail shoulder blades.
I slowly
reached my hands further
and further
into the deep pockets,
dreading that I’d find leftover food wrapped up in napkins-
and cried when it wasn’t there.

The morning after,
I wash him off my skin.
I peel away the clothes
that I picked up off his floor.
I ***** him out
of my stomach
and rinse him out
of my mouth.
When I finally wash
all of the layers of him away -
it's just me

and I feel so small
underneath all of him.

A clean white sheet-
the left side tucked under his mattress,
one corner held underneath a stack of books.
The other corner tied into a giant knot
around his desk chair.
We crawled inside on our knees,
careful of what we built,
bodies side by side,
our breath was all around us,
warm.

When he turned towards me,
his foot knocked over the books,
the white sheet floated down onto my face,
destroyed.