Nebulae
written by: Artemis Bronstein
Umbilical dreams
Twirling eternally like nebulae
Tiny fingers, soft alien in your pod
ripe pea you burst forth
and my scream is still echoing somewhere in the galaxy
my firstborn
I didn’t know what to expect
astrologists could not have predicted
as they watched the sky tear asunder
in wonder
the fabric of reality split
like a dividing zygote
as pain took me under
a cesarean cut through life
mother and girl
surgically separated.
My fingers gripped hospital sheets
gathering up folds of alternate realities
blood spilling into sodium light
of clinical ward 5 bathroom
she was just 23, she said:
please don’t let me die tonight.
New life, you cracked from your spring-chick shell
just to be swallowed down the gullet of this
vulturous universe.
Can’t your soft, malleable
little biscuit-scented head
be cradled forever in mother-love
can’t innocence of the womb be salvageable?
My little son
with your gentle soul
cast into stormy waves of chaos
I can only hope
your fragile, seashell soul
remain whole.
