You created my inmost being; you knitted me together in my mother’s womb. I was woven together in the depths of the earth; from the first stitch your eyes saw my unformed body.  Before you completed that first row all the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be.

You selected the yarn by colour, by weight, choosing the texture with utmost care. You picked out the ideal needles, counted the ***** of wool and with a smile settled down to cast on that first stitch.

Your fingers blurred into action as you chatted with family, confident of the pattern you yourself designed  -

With a knit and a pearl the stitches increased and decreased to ensure the desired shape, maintaining a consistent gauge stitch after stitch, row after row.

And after hours of knitting and chatting, with a satisfied sigh you cast off and held up the result of your handy work to the light for all to admire.

How precious you are to me. How I wonder at this body knitted together with such love and with such great skill.  I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully knitted.

Satin ribbons
streaming thighs
seedless apple womb.

Fire of womanhood
birthing passion
burning lust.

Cherry stained lips
making love
to velvet glasses.

***** eyes
siren for Mars
tumid ***.

Blooming roses
slippery as silk
sigh in red.

Torn from mother's womb.
Lungs strain with gasps of cold air,
Unforgiving world.

All I see is up
The pink flower stretches to forever at the sky
I stare wishing to be among the clouds
Its anterior filters the sun’s warmth upon my soft arms
I sit upon the dark, sodden, summer earth
I am all to myself. Alone.
At home under their stems
So benign am I encased by the pink flower

The pink flower trembles under slight hand of a summer breeze
Honeyed are its petals,
But dangerous is its center
Pricking my delicate fingers
If I am not careful
Yet I watch a dragonfly land on it with grace           
Fragile insect legs grip tightly at the miniature pointed peaks

Wind caresses wisps of hair around my petite face
I am like a fairy
Not knowing the wonders of the world
Only the kingdom of the pink flower
Moisture sweetens the air
Drenching it with the breath of nature
Almost as if a mother is breathing comfort into my small body

Back to the whirlwind of starting from scratch.
Alone in I sit and watch
as the world moves beneath me, around me, surrounding me and blanketing me with coolness.
Winter months are the best because they make me wonder and think clearer.
I'm waking to a fresh kind of birth where I can leave behind my struggles and venture forth into the great unknown.
And the white starkness of sky that was once bright blue awakens my true frozen heart, deep in slumber,
to pulse a red  purplish bruise that hurts, then soothes.
That's what this season is all about.

Preservation, hibernation, incubation, proclamation, prioritization.

It is the Root Cellar holding all that is dear.
It preserves the best parts of me so so I won't mold and crumble away.
I sit, soaked in vinegar, ripening.
I sleep, preserved in thick viscous jelly, not solid, but swishy.
I guess winter lets me breath as I try to wriggle out of the glass jar encasing my body.
It's hard, and a little slippery.
I am soaked in purplish red blood.
I am born to the rain soaked land, wishing it would snow.
But alas, it only welcomes me to a season so familiar that tears start to form in my eye corners.
Wet and shivering, I open the Root Cellar's door with a creak, and step into guerdon.

I grew pregnant with my past,
unable to separate from the reality that began as a seed inside me.
Submerged in water, I tried to released you-
my past, my dear child...
but this bath of death,
flooded with the thick red of fluid despair,
held us closer together.
i want you,
twirling in my womb
under the moon at twilight
as i dance my way into whimsical decisions.
I feel you tap,
                   tap,
                      tap,
                         pry,
                             claw,
                                   scratch
at the lining of my uterine wall.
i want you,
i do not.
Sentiment is blinding.
My dear child...
you are not good for me,
though I hold you with eternal warmth.
I am your mother, you are my past.
I open my eyes,
I’m back in the steam of my hazy bath
like an aquatic portal in the corner of comfort and suicide.
The red is gone... yet it was never there.
All that remains is my fetal past pulsing perfectly.
My stomach breaks the grey pond within porcelain,
pertruding through the patches of rose colored suds.
Closing my eyes never looked so dark, the blackest black
like my favorite dreams.
My head falls back and the red liquid returns,
hugging the crevices of my face,
filling my hollow orifices,
pulling my life far enough to look over me
and smile
with pursed lips and one crystal tear...
i am submerged,
yet all I hear are whispers in this bed made of water
singing me lullabies as I drift into a synthetic evening.
I am tucked in, dreaming of the lightest light in the darkest black.
The contrast helps me understand life’s cogs and screws.
i place my pruned fingers on my pregnant stomach,
my fragile past..
You will not leave me, so I must leave you.
My life’s gentle claws let me go
and bursts through the sun and clouds,
as gravity holds me close to his chest and kisses my cheek bones.
I see the light in the laughing stars,
I lay lifeless,
belly full of a dead past.
Goodbye,
             my dear child.
                                 Goodnight.


© 2016 D.M.V

The location of the biological clock is complex.
Situated somewhere  between my body
and everyone else's business.
Turning my womb into a property
everyone feels free to voice their opinion on. 

As an elder woman turns to me and says:
"Now you're the only one left! Surely you'll be next." 
Pressure disguised in encouragement. 
One I am hesitant to slander, so I walk away, 
politely, as if it were just a simple fender ******. 

Remarks and expectations thrown at me.
Everyone's opinion picking scabs to wounds 
inside me nobody even knows exist.
Irrecoverable lacerations I will carry with me 
until the end of my days. 

Tik Tok goes the clock; perhaps it was a knock?
The message always the same: "Hurry up or you'll fall behind." 
I slowly reach for the instrument measuring my time,
I tempt my fate a little while longer 
by reluctantly snoozing my biological clock.