Stillbirth

I do not begin immediately.

I am not dawn.

I will take my time to plaster myself upon the world.

Consciousness breaks, like water,

and now the birth pains

are my lids and lips; slowly becoming sticky-notes

meshed on angry, unfinished essays.

Someone else's unfinished essays.

They rub against my paper-mache eyes and my ink-sodden tongue with

something akin to relish,

and enjoy the friction of temporal attachment.

Expand, and I feel the sand of my face

shifting, shifting, with the liquid light; currents of the Sun

that flow through the curtains I know are above me

seeping into my shore.

Tiny feet scour my cheeks for shells

and I dare not move for fear

of earth-quaking her to never was.

Contract. Nesting deep in the throat, an injured bird breathes slow and painful.

I try to start.

Thoughts coil like infuriating headphones wires

and the dreamlessness of my sleep hours mock me.

'This is what you left us for? You silly, silly child!'

And I look at them like I would at a once-lover.

My words are beaten prisoners, with no more juice in them.

Are these what I shall use, to find her eyes in the glare of my dreams?

No.

Perhaps I shall not plaster after all.

For now, I say to myself,

let this be a stillbirth.