All comforts we create
Can't compare to the womb
All our fears of fate
Drive us toward the tomb
They cut the umbilical cord
They way I cut my phone cord
Leaving me alone and torn
Wishing I could curl up in a curl
And experience comfort from the world
Where people pay with change
Because they have no money
And people pay with rain
Because they have no honey

I've seen the chaos of fire
And the serenity of water
And the steam that rises when they're combined
The wet ashes of love mix into a thick cement
And become the heart's hardened womb
The heart's hellish hatred blooms
From within the darkness
Bringing us hardships

When my brain is in my eyes
It brings discomfort in disguise
Like the discomfort when I lie
And say I don't give a **** about what others think
Mentally I have become fetal
Yet I'm trying to sound regal
The illusion of indifference
Protects me from conversation
Like the womb or the tomb
And the broom is the tool
That sweeps dirt up under the rug
When my heartstrings begin to tug
The womb is the only place clean and snug

In a world where people become mindless weapons
The womb becomes a pistol
Blasting bullets into the Earth
We save our solidarity
For the moments when massive amounts of people die
And the bar seems to keep rising
And we forget the importance of one
Until we are hit personally
And look down to see blood from multiple wounds
The result of gunshots fired by multiple wombs

I feel jailed in my own body
socially forced to conceive
emotionally sick
hurt within

Scared to transmit pain
in this age of depression
reminding my ancestors' culpability;
will I also hurt my descendant?

Struggling to finish a phd
in this age of precarity
thinking it might push me;
Or, will I fail it all?

After Tarfia Faizullah’s Hidden Registers

She winces at taboo, the same way
she looks at empty ultrasounds.

The ache

inside the hollowed curve of her
womb, she imagines carrying color

to fill

translucent dreams. Her hand paints
spells onto her stomach, she wants

to believe again. That split
a girl finds between her legs,

the wonder

it first captured, she wants newborn pink
on her cheeks and unmoving lips.

The pout her ******* makes,
rises in swells under the moon,

to feel

that luminous glow. She holds
out, the palms of her hands,

for alms. Comets ricochet into her,
until her breath slows to sleep. She is still,

the woman

inside her is quiet, laying in wait.
They dream of seeds and sunrises.


A. T. Bockholdt

my belly grows the size of a bag of apricots
there is a will at the bottom of a lake that needs retrieving
the car sank but the body made it to the shore and changed her name by midnight
come springtime the ice melts and the water is back
crawling upon shy ankles
there are growing pains who find a home between nettles and
the hives of adobe wasps
i never could cohabitate with nature
when they ask at parties where i've been
things that are at rest stay at rest

Born from a womb.
By and By, a minute passes-
Hours at a time.
Having with me nothing-
Not a thing, but the death
That is mine.

This world delights you,
but you may not love him.
For when he leave
the truth cling to you.

And lead you
to do things
and thunder from
the ******'s womb
might not linger
so that he stays.

everything in life has symmetry.
your warm tender lips and the olive green oak tree
i can't tell you how much you mean to me
you render me completely helpless yet free
when i am with you i feel so complete
please, please never leave me.
you are my sweet symmetry.