first

We sat on the edge of the tub
and what could we possibly have washed away?
                                                                                   The sky was never so deep and the clouds were running away.
I gifted you pain in words until you were the child in my arms
And we – a confused circle of daughter and mother.
We are in synchronicity, in lucidity, in anguish
With a translucent cord pulsing between us
Mother to daughter to mother to
                                                                                  Death is never so obscene as on a warm spring afternoon.
You and I are we right now
sitting on the edge of the womb.

and then

The world is a postcard today. I don’t trust these blues and greens. The road between here and death is a dark cord pulsing, pushing, pulling. My grief is the muck traveling through it, gushing thickly. The cord between us is fading and we tumble along the pain as two small human beings, gifting each other pain and survival.