Tag Archives: Birth

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Lake Water Lapping

It doesn’t matter that the sun has slipped behind my view for a while or that the amber hyacinth glass has lost its bright light. And then returns, irrepressible as though it never went away.

How could it, how could the life force that keeps me here, have disappeared? The taste of my fingernails, just for a second and the bole of my May tree is hidden by the cacophony of daffs, just look at them. They don’t care. They know how to do this, singing out wild and abandoned, accepting the wilt to come. I suppose I do the same.

I pack boxes, I run fingers over ornaments, I caress the dust and breathe it in, greet it, welcome in its stories.

Sometimes just for a second, it’s as though I understand. I feel the ecstasy and terror simultaneously, as though looking at the sun bringing gold to my amber glass, as though, in this moment I am everyone.

I want to hold them. All of them and tell each of them it will be ok. It will get better. I know it will and my daffs dance on the windowsill and my hyacinth reaches up to the light.

Everything is golden. like honey. And a hive for the honeybees.

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Womb Shaped

If you study the shellac on your nails and lose yourself in its luminous magical lights, in the rainbow shot silver sparkle, it will take you back. 

Take you back to just before, in the hours, in the safety, in the warmth before the sense of separation came.

And there in the shimmerings is your father, walking home in the dark, your mother in the care of the midwives and the waiting. And he slept but she didn’t and later, hours later when the phone rang in the early light, the timeless spaces on your nails flash you to his side, to him sat on the edge of the bed with your grandparents who’d come to help. 

And his words spilled out in the chill January morning, we’ve got a little girl and they cried.

They hugged and they cried and your father fought his legs into his trousers and blurred across pavements to your mother’s side. She slept and you slept although you didn’t know it.

And the sparkles on your fingertips now are the snowflaked halos around the street lamps then and the warmth of the first cup of tea when your mother woke up. And your father said she was a king to how she was before, rested yet weak, strong in the release of primal blood. 

And the lights shine off your nails like sparks of magic bringing hope, like your eyes opening in the dark, your tiny newborn body still curled and warm, womb shaped.

Your father looked at the rows of incubators, directed towards yours. They all look the same, his tired voice drifting up, his breath on glass in the dim light. But yours was the face he came to know, yours was the life that filled up theirs.

Decades ago, and the shellac on your nails now seems to dance and sing, liberated, joyful like their arms, arms that held you tight, fluttering and glistening, arms that set you free. 

The brightness of your snowflakes, the moonlight in your eyes. And if you look into the shellac of your nails now you see and feel the wintering, the gratitude of the place and time where you came in.

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Time Dilation #5

I suppose it was me and the clock, me and the concerned faces, me breathing and counting and getting nowhere. I suppose I don’t like being told that I can’t do something, so I try even harder for a while. A sense that to give up would be to fail.

Now I can feel it’s me talking from exhaustion (much like this morning, in this world now.) A sense of the pressure I put on myself, but then as now, sooner or later, I gave in, gave myself up to it all. 

I remember the nurse or maybe he was a consultant? (It wasn’t Johnny V, we never saw him again, with his slicked back black hair and pristine striped shirt) but someone apologised to me and my determination broke free from my eyes, rolled in spheres down my hot flushed cheeks. 

I guess the rest of the evening was spent in the theatre, but no aisle seat for me that time. I was centre stage, I was the whole ensemble, I was the diva under their lights and clamps and curtains. My abdomen sang wide, glorious and while they hurried, tinkered and sewed the gash, I loved him in my bloodied arms. 

Home.

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Time Dilation #4

I seem stuck, a little laden down, a little numb. And while today’s radiator warms my back to the sound of clocks and snoring, my younger hands lose their grip and tea comes tumbling, scalding, soaking into their hospital robe and I crumple.

Soon, cursor flashing, clock ticking. Tomorrow, younger, stronger.

Still stuck.

Worried the words will find me in a heap on their sterile floor but I keep going, like then, like now. Keep going and I slept half on diazepam, half on exhaustion like a dribbling drunk in their faux leather chair.

With prayer around me. 

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Time Dilation #3

This familiarity in sitting, waiting, a sense that I can’t give up. And if it were a Saturday I’d have cried at the woman between my legs, at her optimism for the day but not later. Later, no change and I sank back into the endless bed. Her trundled trolley of glinting things tidied away hope and wheeled it out the door.

Only the armchair held me, knew me, when I called out for help. I do wonder how her life worked out, the woman with the strange name who took my weight over the toilet. I still think about her, even now and the meds they locked away from me till morning.

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Time Dilation #1

Morning started in the thin pink ethnic t-shirt that took me under the tree I’ll pass by later. I’m sure the bole of it remembers me, it showed me how to bend into the nature. I said I’d do whatever it takes and I did.

Now I come to think of it, it was the pale green embroidered t-shirt, did I change in the morning, now I’m not sure? Either way trees came and went. They wheeled me inside.

Later. Round about now a new ceiling watched me sleep despite the spasms.

Pillows subsumed me.

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Changes

Now there’s a tree watching over the bed, birds scrabbling for food, people darting in and out the Costas just off to the right and if they looked up from their latte they’d see me in the window looking out.

I didn’t like yesterday’s room though, felt too far tucked away, almost a sense of punishment, of neglect.  Broken thinking on my part, of course. Tiredness doesn’t help.

Of course the care was on point and Senior Sister Gemma enfolded me with her reassuring London tones, her voice and her words and her ways. She called me darlin’ and we joked about the room upgrade. She should have been pulling pints but she was pushing beds instead and I was grateful .

And when the upgrade came, when trees were administered, when the relief of natural light came into view, I relaxed (a little.)

A ward with a window over green and the bole of the tree stands guard, steady, constant, dependable bark that’s been there a hundred years watching people change.

I feel like I’ve been there a hundred years but it’s only day seven or is it eight?

Maybe that’s why the previous room took me down, floored me with an echo of late pregnancy, of no privacy, of people poking and me hanging on. Propped up, out of time with a job to do, concerned faces, waiting, willing. Praying. 

I think that’s it, the silent magnolia walls, the speckled ceiling, just a little too high for my liking and a view, (if you can call it that,) over the scrag end of the buildings. 

Still, that’s not now. 

I’d better get up, I’ve got a job to do. I hope Gemma’s on today. I like her long black pony tail. When she walks, it swings like a metronome on her back, keeping me steady with her rhythm.

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Make the Links – Weather Bird (Rag)

Following myself along is sometimes confusing. I do get lost at times. I start out down by the river by the ancient bridge. I wonder how I’m connected to the woman in the photo from 1905, with her skirt brushing the pavements. I jump-cut, I fly.

But I know how I’m connected to the woman in 1962, sipping strong tea, exhausted and her brand new warm pink baby has a heavy head, it makes her arm ache, her thin arms that would entangle mine on-top of Pendle Hill, years later. You know the hill? That hill, her arms, that baby, this life.

You know how it goes. So I keep following myself. The river flows over rocks, timeless. There are words in the river. I wander by waters. Fluid.

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Treasured (Underland #5)

In her mind she organised the day, hid little treats around the house, his favourite things and she baked. Tiny cakes and tiny biscuits as though they lived in a magical world. She iced everything with silver letters, anagrams of their favourite words and she watched him as he ate. One letter after another, sugared syntax on his tongue and he was happy. 

She loved to bake, she liked to feed him and later she set up the annual treasure hunt. Clues were presented in unusual places and the more he searched the younger he became. 

And the younger he became, the more they merged. Together, hand in hand they moved back in time until he caught her eye by the school gate and she looked down. And up. She looked back up at him and smiled. They walked towards the bottom end of town, to the park by the swimming pool and round the back, under the bridge, in the shadows he pulled her into him and kissed her. It was the most obvious thing and somehow as their lips collided it shuddered through the years as though she was an older woman looking back. 

They walked on, arms linked, talking nonsense, laughing. And at the turning for her road he said he’d meet her in morning, he might be a little late.

‘Wait here for me?’ he said. And she nodded, ‘I’ll be waiting,’ kissed his cheek and turned to go then stopped.

‘Oh, I made lemon drizzle today in food-tech, got loads, d’you want some?’ and she pulled the tupperware out from her bag, flicked the lid off and gave the cake to him, soft and moist, sugared in tiny stars. 

She pushed it into his mouth with pen stained fingertips, it melted on his tongue and he swallowed. 

‘Pretty good,’ he said. ‘Yeah, pretty good,’ he smiled, and it was and she was and they were. 

Then. 

And now.

And always.

x

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Verdant

Lilies grew out of the scar on my tummy, daring, irreverent and girlish. They flung their arms wide; they didn’t care. Lisianthus burst up and out, willowy, confident, pretty and they knew it. They waved at the lilies who nodded in respect. Painted ladies and red admirals fluttered from the same places where the flesh had bled, their damp tissue paper wings felt cool against the air. Meconium pumped out, squirted across the scar as if to say, I love you, I remember. As if to say, all the pain, the hours of spasms, the empty walls I looked at, waiting hoping, are all tucked away and understood.

The nights spaced out, the ceilings passing over me, all locked away with care and when my language broke, when halos caressed each word that left my mouth, when every breath was forged from armour, when the weight of the shields tore my muscles to shreds, I kept on holding. When every cell pulsed with one cause, when no one could help me but the tiger claws that grew, claws of steel against the battle that consumed me.

Then.

Then my scar erupted, then it exploded out in trees, oaks towering from my tiny form, their roots soaked in my blood, fed from my placenta and willows softened out the gash, they wept over the chasm where my abdomen had been, they wrapped their tendrils around the scalpels and the knives, they paved the way, they saved me. They dropped leaves into my hollow and from the mulch, from the deep rich earth inside me, petrichor filled the theatre, soil sodden with my tears and surgeons took a step back, as I expanded, I roared life into the room.

Eagles flew out of me, feathers caked in green and red, they soared around the room, under their spotlights, singing loud. I remember the golden flash of their beaks, they winked at me with eyes that saw more than I could and, in the crater, where my abdomen used to be, a forest thrived, birds cheered, creatures danced, insects giggled in the sunshine.

I watched the ceiling smile down on me as I stroked the wound, hand bloodied and joyous. We Made This the corpuscles seemed to say. And my body rejoiced. My body was perfect, my scar came to show me the way.