"Our Death is in Your Belly"

our death is in your belly
a mass of muscle and sinew
stitching with her own needle

four helixes into two
a ribbon dancer
pirouetting with our DNA
in a 40-week recital before leaping forth,

half-you-half-me and ending our lives our death is in your belly because before her we were strangers boy                  and                  girl
ping-ponging                  across                  the                  continent
until we collided hips into a moment
when we both forgot our names
shed our skins into each other
poured and swallowed our best intentions
two short lifetimes of sins and sorrows
into hope of something better than us both
our death is in your belly because once she arrives reforming us into something new
we will no longer be Self and Other
but Her
entire
and no shatter of time nor territory can unmake the magic we distilled into her cells
our death is in your belly bearing a name we have chosen but not yet bestowed a name she will shape with experiences chiseled from scraped knees and first kisses painting her legacy across the tongue of history until he speaks her story into the generations hence whatever name we articulate afterward, the echoed men and women will call her
the name trees have 
for earthquakes
the noun waves use
for tsunamis
or what shattered moons 
call the supernovae
that reduced them 
to asteroids
our death is in your belly and when she cuts umbilical the arrogant World will know his greatest sin was not anticipating her arrival not building enough bomb shelters to preserve his deceptions not assembling an army to resist her so she will leave in wreckage his broken promises turn into refugees the Should-Haves and Might-Have-Dones that civilizations left behind in the vapor around their stone monuments you
will be the mother who bore the joyous cataclysm
and I
will be the failure
she will rectify
in her own time
our death is in your belly
how we die
will be up to us
                  and what kills us
                  up to fate
but she will be our death
the last face we see
the last hand we hold
the last voice we hear
as the light dims in our irises
as the mechanics slow
to a dull whisper
as the organs take well-earned vacation
from life-long labor
and she,
looking back
will be the price paid
for all we have endured
she will be our death
the daughter to bury us both
first one,
then the other
she will be our death judging whether our lives be worthy of eulogy she will inscribe the epitaph telling the world what we have left behind whatever she writes
will be for her,
not us
for us,
she is what we left behind
she will forge the fire
our privilege was to light the flame
she will be our death and I can hear the rumblings of our doom when I press my ear against your belly
she sounds like gods 
of 6,000 mythologies ...
... trembling
she sounds like a love song 
stars sing to each other
she sounds like Four Horsemen 
before loosening themselves upon the World
she sounds like a poem 
just before it is spoken
she sounds like revolution 
wrapped around the first bullet
she sounds the whisper in the night 
that ignites 
the
Big
Bang
she sounds like the ache 
of our first kiss
when it was still partitioned on our lips knowing our next moment would end in death for us both
but a little girl we have yet to meet
would ferry us into the dark
unafraid of what may 
not 
come
next

Comments