Perhaps you have no memory
of how you got here:
you arrived steaming from this wet place
stretched her skin, skull screeched through
muscle; blood streamed with water,
salty, precious; nine months long
fed through the cord of life, you breathed water,
turned somersaults in brine.
Tiny seahorse swinging by one leg,
you forgot whatever came before.
Now you have been cut
away from her body,
you must re-enter
through your own.
Surface, into bright sun,
parrot’s screech,
water steams off broad jungle leaves
morning in Eden.
by Jennifer Boire, from In Our Mother’s Garden: Or A Place of trees. Chapbook Published by Over the Moon Press, Montreal, 2003. Shared with permission of the author.
Painting by Elisabeth Slettnes
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