painting by: jess gonacha

One Birth

She says she dances like her father.
A man she hardly knows,
but visits on occasion
to witness lines, wrinkles, and laughter
each one has inherited and shared.

They walk on Pacific shorelines
to comment on waves crashing in
and how tides within their hearts
pull them under surfaces of distant skin.

He says—water is resistant,
a volatile compound of
hydrogen and oxygen
creating an elemental bond
between two letters, or people of varying degrees.

All you need is a number to connect
the present to its past, and the air we breathe
to the water in which we were born,
of and through and out into the startling world.

It is a space of white,
not like heaven where there are many doors,
but a hospital room where angels
are already waiting with broken wings.

We don’t know any better.
We say its okay because our mothers
are already holding us to their breasts,
inhaling parts of themselves they wish to heal,
every corner and crease of our infant bodies
and our open eyes.

They pause to listen for our survival,
whether we will make it through the night
and grow into something they can claim
as their creation, their retribution for the mystery
of it all.

This life, these words,
our poems
aching to come back to you.