Lunette 15
I came into the world through a wound
I opened, still wet with the aftermath
that fed me once. Then my mother took
to the long sadness that sometimes follows.
Not the ache of loss or any one loss
in particular. No discernable farewell
or foreclosure. You have been there.
This rain that gave you comfort falls and falls
into a sea whose shorelines never rise.
If I cried out to no one in my crib,
know that I survived. I carry the stuff
of oceans after all. Blood understands
what it means to move, to want to move,
to press open the valves of the heart.
However deep the grief, flesh is deeper,
the quiet joy and journey of the water,
air, and vital sign. Our pulses tell us,
we have something to lose. No telling when
my mother’s sadness lifted, let alone why.
But she is in me, mending. In her sleep
and mine, the falling angels of the rain.
