Un-baptise
A stranger’s grasp
Cages your soft skin.
Dropped into the font –
That frozen womb.
Transparent and empty.
The pressure on your body,
As the image flickers over your clear vision
On the other side of that screen of water.
About to be un-born.
Time slides back, to you,
Trickled with blood,
Immersed into air
Ready to be embraced against living skin.
Not captured in icy photo-flash or family smiles.
No sodden buffet to invite warm wishes –
To speed that moment from this
Thudding fist within my chest
And into a frame.
All but this image is just cold water,
Drops of rain, streaking a mother’s blood.
I © 2013
John Newton is a 25 year-old, Philosophy and English Literature graduate currently splitting his time between north Birmingham and south London and working around the edges of politics.