Poetry
Back to the Womb
Estranged child… will you ever return?
Once in a while, perhaps half-past a while,
I hear a rustle and my pulse whirls,
a slosh, goosebumps dew.
I swallow the fog —
Could it be you?
Could it be your hands pushing
my swinging arms — the gates
that greet you back home,
from a lifetime deployment,
the fated Battle of Grease and Concrete?
Could it be your feet plunging dry
my soaked floors, the little pools
I filled for you?
Your silence is a double leap year,
more seasons lost.
My rabbits, boars, and foxes tut;
they ask me,
Are we not enough for you?
No one child may fill another’s quiet,
nor make absence another’s seat.
My estranged one, will you ever return?
Perhaps I must change my lanterns —
firefly to neonfly,
frozen lakes to tempered screens —
snowlit to blue-lit,
match mistful curtains to tobacco smog.
Only then may…
