Rebirth

I am transitioning. 

 

motherhood: 

 

milk-coated moments 

soft, opaque, all love and light. 

 

smoke-filled lungs

choking on small scenes 

wading blindly

 

I started small.

 

one additional heart 

five years, holding his 

small, sturdy body in my arms

feeling it bloom, all limbs. 

 

his hands, still new, only larger now. 

he rests them on my growing belly

his brother

 

his small mouth talks of protection. 

 

I hold him as I always have

with my whole self

days, minutes, hours before

I split myself in two.

please –

 

teach our sons to

open doors, to

ask for permission

 

our daughters to know

NO is not taboo to

roll their shoulders back

and drink in the world

 

my son sleeps on my husband’s

strong chest and somewhere

I am thinking only of my family

not how big your dick is

 

I am someone

I am wife, mother, lover

flesh, blood

tears

 

the hyenas laugh, punch each

others arms, stumble into the

bar with stars in their eyes

 

please,

please do not become the

fathers to our daughters,

to our sons.

we still love

(http://abduzeedo.com/surreal-world-igor-morski)

she spies love

like a hurricane in her thin chest.

 

he holds her with rough hands,

makes use of his photographic memory

when he holds her and she turns away.

 

but remember this, she says:

we used to love in the dark,

when love was a good sunrise,

when our bodies understood one another,

 

before time made us love just a little more quietly.

 

we still love, she says.

 

only this way:

with each gentle sway of our son as he falls asleep in our arms

in fingers interlocked across the console after grocery shopping

at the dinner table, covered in conversation and pureed carrots

in sighs of exhaustion and mumbled goodnights

 

and sometimes

 

still

 

in a damn good sunrise.

 

**Hi from the parent side of things!!! It’s been WAY too long….but I’m still trudging along with this chapbook and raising this absolutely amazing little boy (who is almost ONE, by the way).

I’ll try to show my face around these parts a bit more often. I hope everyone is well.

 

xo,

Nicole Marie

 

 

The Philosopher

(http://www.artmajeur.com/en/artist/balivet/collection/the-mythological-goddess-art-of-emily-balivet/1072913/artwork/the-lap/996237)

He wakes and his Cupid’s mouth

Is thrumming at my breast.

 

I lift him high with tired arms

And he thinks I shaped the sky

 

With these two hands. In simple

Motions I am a life source, in

 

Quiet rooms by lamplight I teach

Him what words are. I used to think

 

I had not done enough, was not full

Enough of something until my own son

 

Searched my face like starlight. In twelve

Hours I became a philosopher in a hospital gown.

who I am and who I will be

(http://ink361.com/app/users/ig-14811147/photos)

I am having trouble
imagining you outside of
my imagination
outside of my own skin,
you are still so much a part of me
that there is no explanation
for the waves that move
without routine between my bones

your eyes are still all
clouds and smoke –
I dream of your mouth
like cinnamon
that will bow,
that will open
and call out for me

this foreign, self-defining thing
I’ve put up on the mantel
and dusted like some
undeserving prize is
something too surreal to
take down, to examine too
closely for detail, I am
so afraid it will slip smoothly
between my fingertips

for now you are still
the loveliest figment
nestled between who
I am and who I will be,
this small thing, this
awkward fleeting girl
with the readjusting
heart for you, my son.

heart incision

(http://heartpeep.com/tag/photoshop/)

at night you place your hands

on two lives that thrive for you.

 

trek this globe,

this mother earth,

make a heart incision

and find there just how

much devotion is keeping us alive.

 

there are love notes that reach out

like sunlight towards the surface of my skin

 

and

 

you are removing

the hair from in front

of my eyes like curtains

through which we see the world

 

while I am thanking you

in infinite possibilities.

a poet to her son

(https://www.pinterest.com/maternitique/the-maternal-muse/)

the holy thrumming of the fan

in our bedroom is chanting your

lullaby in protective undertones.

 

I am cozy, staring into the poised

bassinet that will hold you just less

than cocooned to me in ten short weeks.

I practice knowing the smell of you,

I stay up later than I’m barely able just

to shake hands with the exhaustion

we’ll happily lend a room to.

 

and you – you are practicing self defense

beneath my flesh; to you, the only world there is.

I could make tiny wishes that you’d some day

tell me what my heartbeat sounds like from the inside:

glass-smooth jazz, a jagged pop beat?

 

I like to imagine my writer’s heart

beats like the honey of a romance novel,

appreciating with intensity every soft thump of life.

 

I question that you’ll read my work

(hold it high as Hamlet held Yorick’s skull)

hold it up to the light and memorize every vein,

test it for disease – or else wave it away as novelty.

at least do me this favor, son: read every word.

chance it. swallow it down and throw it up if you must.

this is your story, the most important I’ll ever write.