In This History I Am a Mother Thrice Vriddhi Vinay

In This History I Am A Mother Thrice

Vriddhi Vinay

The first daughter I birthed was cesarean / my stomach parted by thumbs like an orange / for a child which would only cry at competing decibels / until its mouth was stretched and frayed into pulp / I didn’t know where to place it when I knew it would never speak / face loose now like the back of its aunt’s embroidery hoop / its lips too tattered to ever utter Amma / to thank the person it once built a nest in / called the house a home / my mother brought it to where we lived in specific Hindu tradition / its neck gilded in chains until they weighed like a noose / I didn’t know if I believed in a (G)(g)od that only saw some the same / so I closed my blessing into the door frame / pressed until the crying too died out / pretended that would absolve me / I think it was reborn as my mother the way the corners of her face spread into a wail / I think she really missed me /

My second daughter was a stillbirth / that is all / I cried this time / at all the memories I had fantasized / my mother never asked if this was a different father / as my stomach exhaled into a plume / I think if I told her she would have cared /

My third daughter widened my vagina past my worth / it only sighed in my arms / in a sauce of both of our fluids / its hands complete / just like its father’s / my mother clasped her hands like prayer when the nurse awed how delicate in their construction / like a sword in my chest I was the only one crying / in what world would the hands I never want to live on me before in me / months / grow to ever hold mine / I was in so much pain my legs swam in a bed of sheets / at night only moaning / my hair curled like my foremothers’ set in my own sweat / the doctors grew scared / sent my mother and my daughter home / for days she didn’t visit / when she returned my organs were hollowed out like a dissection rat’s / my body now more of a bowl than a carcass / my mother asked / “is that really her?” / my daughter recognized me / cooed in a voice of healing woman / my mother handed it to me / and I kissed its little fingers / before taking them off with my teeth / then limb by limb / kiss its sleeping face / before swallowing it whole / body a home again in me /