Renée Rossi
SELF-PORTRAIT OF A BIRTH FROM HAND-HELD MIRROR
The last time you will ever be judged as a fruit,
cervix ripe as a pomegranate,
bursting fine conjunctival vessels,
petechial hemorrhages budding the afterbirth
of sutures through a torn perineum, the crowning
moment, a baby
trailing umbilical cord a right and wrong way,
the absolute mocking him from
a Where’s Waldo roadmap into the future.
Little dabs of silver nitrate swabbed over his eyes.
It will be nothing to love him so much
you can’t give answers when he later sees
a missed abortion in your medical book, the bones
of a fetal skeleton entombed in a mother’s womb.
Why do they call it a seed, he’ll ask,
when seeds grow into plants. Why are there maggots
under the compost lid, the same ones that crawl
on an amputee’s stump
after you’ve unwrapped the dirty bandage
but you won’t tell him this or why the neighbor asks
you to bury the dead hummingbird
that’s thrown its body against her picture window,
because you’re used to death,
you’ve cross-clamped arteries and veins
leading in and out of that place
that connects the two of you.
Your little prayer book of childhood opens
to the Acts of Contrition. Where a fetal heart beats
in a jar of formaldehyde. You touch his soft fontanelle.