BEFORE I BECAME A WOMAN (A THOUSAND EGGS CRACKING)
I am reflecting on life as if I am no longer in its
domain,
I am a rememberer, drawing conclusions about my emotions
towards a life I have not yet quite ceased to live.
Though I had never previously considered it,
I had expected a death, not a dying,
a quick synaptic supernova entry into the afterlife,
a transition,
not a transformation.
I did not expect to die filled with awe at my proximity to
eternity.
* * *
Ashes to ashes
Dust to dust
And sometimes the dust is electric
As the Pleiades once were
Grant me, too, metamorphosis
* * *
All of a sudden you became something that wasn't there / at
the end, there was no way to touch you and not examine
you / you had brought all your organs to the surface like a
seastorm returning sea wreckage / every single caress
became a probe / Butterfly - the death you began in a
cocoon now not merely in the light but wondrous / you left
no way to look at yourself except as a witness / the night
you wooed came to woo you and dark came down all around
you / all of a sudden you became something that wasn't
there / at the end, there was no way to touch you and not
degrade you, every part of you was an orifice, like a
genital / your body revealed everything we are not meant to
see, you showed the world everything before you left it.
* * *
We think we will achieve menarche
We think we will come to fruition in this world
We think in terms of hours, heartbeats, nightfalls we are
owed
We demand them as virulently as a tax collector
We think that we will never have a coffin sink down on us
before a lover
When it was sharp, we thought it would be the strong knife
slicing the umbilical cord
Not the fiery sword of the angel of death
But I can say, before I became a woman I died
And before that I dreamt of jungle animals hunting and
making love until they had created a smooth arc from death
to life
Until I could neither name the darkness nor the light,
just the change
Dear night, I could not tell the sound of funeral bells
from the noise of one thousand eggs that were hatching
I am reflecting on life as if I am no longer in its
domain,
I am a rememberer, drawing conclusions about my emotions
towards a life I have not yet quite ceased to live.
Though I had never previously considered it,
I had expected a death, not a dying,
a quick synaptic supernova entry into the afterlife,
a transition,
not a transformation.
I did not expect to die filled with awe at my proximity to
eternity.
* * *
Ashes to ashes
Dust to dust
And sometimes the dust is electric
As the Pleiades once were
Grant me, too, metamorphosis
* * *
All of a sudden you became something that wasn't there / at
the end, there was no way to touch you and not examine
you / you had brought all your organs to the surface like a
seastorm returning sea wreckage / every single caress
became a probe / Butterfly - the death you began in a
cocoon now not merely in the light but wondrous / you left
no way to look at yourself except as a witness / the night
you wooed came to woo you and dark came down all around
you / all of a sudden you became something that wasn't
there / at the end, there was no way to touch you and not
degrade you, every part of you was an orifice, like a
genital / your body revealed everything we are not meant to
see, you showed the world everything before you left it.
* * *
We think we will achieve menarche
We think we will come to fruition in this world
We think in terms of hours, heartbeats, nightfalls we are
owed
We demand them as virulently as a tax collector
We think that we will never have a coffin sink down on us
before a lover
When it was sharp, we thought it would be the strong knife
slicing the umbilical cord
Not the fiery sword of the angel of death
But I can say, before I became a woman I died
And before that I dreamt of jungle animals hunting and
making love until they had created a smooth arc from death
to life
Until I could neither name the darkness nor the light,
just the change
Dear night, I could not tell the sound of funeral bells
from the noise of one thousand eggs that were hatching
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