JAMAICA BALDWIN
As the Nurse Fills Out the Intake Form, the Ocean Speaks Your Name after Gwendolyn Brooks When the nurse asks, have you ever been pregnant? I clench my teeth, hold my breath for what comes next: do you have any children? In the space between the questions, I heard the ocean sleepwalking, followed it up the road where in the middle, under the streetlight, it turned around. The mouth of the ocean spoke the name I never gave you, voices I never learned by heart, a body I never held pacing the hallways of motherhood pleading with God for sleep. In silence, the nurse records my answers. I meet her silence with the wind of my own quiet womb. Time calcifies your memory: the unbone, the unbreath, the songs we never sang, our voices never fading into sleep. I realize sorrow is not made solely of this blood. Wind forgives the mother who opted out, but mysterious is the still childless woman who chose the same dim impossible light. Listen, I wanted more joy to greet you, less time killed in thirst. I wanted more of me able to take on the world for her children.
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