BIRTH

It never began or ended.

I was a timeless ocean of movement and light, sound of a thin
 silver flute spilling waterfalls over the edge of another world that you opened wide the hands of your dreams to catch.

Wounds that are always weeping.

In our first memory, one mother
 bleeds out her skin’s pigment; I am bright red
 and purpling around the edges; the second
 mother is painted every shade of panic. 



Sounds smear the walls with the one feeling 
that is every feeling and we are floating 
up by the ceiling, smoke wisps whorling 
into prayers that never touch
 ground.

The push of ancestral palms between 
 my shoulder blades speak of all the ways that one body can make room
 for another to come to being,

and how these bodies 
 are not 
the finished things our language 
 would make us 
 seem.

Luminous seed of blood’s memory maps the future with echoes of my mother’s laughter.

I know that you continue.