when someone asks if I've been writing new poems

it’s the coldest summer of the rest of my life.
third trimester ablaze, that July
the air conditioning gave out on my birthday
and I sat sweating in a bikini before two fans,
downing glasses of lemon water while the fetus protested,
all the blinds closed against a hundred-degree heat dome.
that summer the tomato plants succumbed
their green fruits to thirsty squirrels
who sucked them dry and then sprawled on fence posts
like exhausted mothers. who could blame them?
we all had a job to do, which was life.

while the organs were forming
I couldn’t think of metaphor, only of nephrons
layering like honeycomb in tiny kidneys.
each week I imagined alveoli proliferating,
tissue paper bubbles filling a tiny chest.
I couldn’t compose while possessed so,
but later I wrote all about it.
water was scarce that summer, words scarcer,
but I put fat on the bones, pumped iron into
the baby’s blood before its long journey.
I imagined ancestors at the beginning of every
apocalypse before, reviewing the way to water.

how has becoming a mother affected your writing?
the act of creation went back inside.
heavy with energy, I wasted no words.
I found the liquid buried in stones.
I refused burning. instead, I transformed
from the inside.
a mother is a creature who revises. ♦