Creation
Creation - Celia A Sorhaindo
Creation
Sometimes the only babies
us women (sub)consciously
choose to birth are our words.
Always a late developer,
mine scratched
on pregnant pause—
then forced their
way out of
tight lips.
Wayward, untidy, they
crawled naked into
the world.
I tried to catch
and tie them in
pink bows
but they wriggled out
to play,
confident, carefree,
and I smiled when Kahlil
and others whispered
they did not belong to me.
At night they crept
into my bed
and covered
my nakedness
with their awkward
limbs.
In muted nightmares—
neglected, fear and shame filled—
they disappeared.
Today I wake
relieved:
know
even in widely spaced silence
no-thing is
barren;
generative words will
always sound us out
full-fill, still weight
us—quiet and cosmic as gravity.
first published online as ‘Giving Birth’ in Mokomagazine 2015, © Celia Sorhaindo 2015, used by permission of the author