Beforehand

south lubec

Beforehand

It’s dark but they say you are coming it’s dark but they say you're

already here

but lightly yet like my newborn who blinks out the bright light and touches

my face

with his fist because it’s all he knows curled up in the dark like he was

all those months

quiet sometimes while my body made a walking cradle until I lay me down

to sleep

and then his fist would rise up across my belly all the way across and it’s

the first time

we’ve ever seen him alive the mould of him moving through

every layer

of skin and blood and membrane and the ark of the sun was

moving through

the sky of my womb and he was in there and he was quiet

and other-

wise growing and the dark meant nothing was wrong even though

both of us

knew it would be a long time through once the snow started

to fall

lightly at first, a drop of white paint on a red canvas how it spread

through

and each arm of it was pointed and bolder more

at the tips

though the middle was where it was the strongest, where it was

the heaviest

where it gathered all it was and is and could be into the bowl of the

trebuchet

and waited as the lever was pulled back, back, back, and

let go