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-meand 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 timenor territory
can unmake the magic
we distilled into her cells
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 deathjudging 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 lipsknowing 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
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