Breaching by Emma Stout

Cup your ears to listen to the blackish blue – the in, out the echoing crack of knuckles

Do three whole rotations beneath the surface, under the wavering white because you can’t seem to grasp Her cord because the sun circles as you spin in tandem with this Earth

It’s nearly time, but you don’t know that, so you ask to the blackish blue: If the only walls to this womb are continents, does that make me an orphan? before Her cord detaches before the last breathe ascends into the gyrating white

You allow yourself one more rotation The amniotic currents of this Earth can’t mother two The choice is not yours to make

For sinking will not feed the sediment and the womb you’ve convinced yourself you belong in you made as a home

Is not yours to heal.

And as you’ve been spinning in the unrelenting blackish blue, She has sighed and returned to her morning paper.

Breaching

by Emma Stout

And as you’ve been spinning, She has blown craters into the foam of her coffee.

And, in doing so, has pushed you to the bottom and drowned you in Her undulating oceans.