We spend our first nine months in
small sacks of transparent, rosy
membranes and indigo-blue veins.

Floating in the fluid darkness,
we breath in time to the beat
of waves rising and breaking

rushing in and out of unseen chambers
of the heart. Existence is a pulsing communion
with God in the ebb and flow of silence

before we wash ashore on the dry banks
of the canal and learn to scream.
My nephew was born small and wrinkled

into latex gloves, with fluid in his lungs.
Brushing my pinky against his petal-fragile
skin, I think of the tides and

the people who return to them with
stones in their pockets, surrendering
to the crashing of salt and heaven

as the first mother fills them
in an inversion of that Egyptian
myth of creation—a small piece of the world

sinking back into Nu’s cold embrace
—and something old and fiercely bright
rises up, overflowing into my smile,

hot and sweet. My eyes burn red against
the late November air as the origins of love
wash me clean.