mother tongue

This would be the time. Find a partner or purchase sperm. Insert future teenager into womb. Water. Water. Water. Remain upside down while saturation continues. Go to breathing class. Eat for 1.5 . Watch texture of hair change and nipples get darker or wider or so sensitive, you walk around rented apartment shirtless. Notice aversions begin as waistline stretches and elastic becomes more necessary than any lover ever was.

Dream about forests swallowing body and baby / roots hovering and hollowing.

This would be the time. This was exactly the time for my mother and sister. My uterus glows neon reminders that if it were to ever be used as container, pod, housing unit for future human, the time is now.

I live inside a tiny room, where walls have been replaced by books and memories and paint and photographs and love notes. This room is wedged inside a dark apartment, which I dream is made of soil and dandelions rather than must and neglect. There would be no room for a baby here. And someone else shares this space and I need to be alone in these walls where yellow drips off the white paint and I swear they are messages they are stories they are past tenants telling me it is time to leave now.

So I go.

Mailboxes are meant to be leased in order to experience other shapes and locations. I move to another street, another corner of borough. I cut all my clothing into squares, sew their corners together and create a quilt. I walk around with this cloak like a cheesecloth, wrapping me into something safe and contained. I hold imaginary hand of imaginary baby. We frequent farmer’s markets and libraries. We learn languages together and this baby buries every one of my scars with each smile.

Maybe I can be whole when I create a whole other.

This would be the time. But my health insurance hasn’t begun yet and my bank account is a bit lower than I’d like it to be and I should probably relearn arithmetic and U.S. history.

Numbers can be intimidating. Traumatizing. A contant reminder of what I should be doing.

I’ll sit inside this. No sperm shopping for the moment. I need to get my things in order. I’m still not convinced I’m a permanent resident here.

At night, my dreams can continue.

“my uterus is in love with yours”

how to love bloat/ pink creased stain/ rorschach
interpretation of womanhood/ mash
pain against sex act/ what it means to bleed art/
her body is a museum
of modern expressionism

On a Sunday evening when Autumn arrives in leaf exhales and wind-blown winces, a uterus discharges an outburst. There is pain far deeper than knuckle crack or papercut or chosen bout of starvation. There is a shift of weight as stained sheet gathers beneath distended body. “How about some hot cocoa? Shortbread?” There is a monster of pain pulling ribs away from each other. An invisible hammer lunges toward each vertebrae. Hair is no longer curled or red; it is gathered by ghosts and torn away from rooted home. Boil water and funnel into bottle in the shape of plastic kidney. Press against belly. Burn away the waft of agony. There is wisdom in blood dripping into silicone menstrual cup suctioned between legs. There is a bully hidden inside the drips which drop onto grey lace underwear staining away its sex quotient.

dear organ of offspring and gesticulation

Oh…..uterus,

Last night, you inserted a dream inside my head. You stole the how, but I received news from another that I had impregnated her. She was angry and I didn’t know how to soothe her. I felt excited by my body’s ability to shoot magic dust into her, allowing cells to form into another human.

Outside of my dream, I don’t want to think of my body having/producing sperm. I want to think of it as glittery blood/cum/gender-empowered ejaculate that has no other name to compare it to. When I awoke, my body felt as though it was a giant hemorrhage. I dipped my fingers into my cunt, thinking they’d be dyed red. I prepared myself for a bed covered in blood, covered in menstruation. However, there was nothing.

For the past three days, uterus, you have been kicking me, bullying my insides and I want to know why.

I press heated towel against you.
I drink enough water to drown you.
I finger myself until orgasms distract you.
I even exercise in order to sweat you away.

Dear Uterus,

You are persistent like love
like my appetite
like my addictions.

All i want to do is poem and you press me further into bed and steal away my motivation for words.