Thoughts that occur to me every year on the eve of the birthday of my two little girls who sometimes read to the cat.
Cuts Both Ways
By Annmarie Lockhart
It’s not the silvery stretch marks sliding along my hip,
nor the spider veins crawling a web up my leg;
it’s not even the baby-weight photos staring down from the wall,
although neither am I anxious to show any of that off to the world.
The thing that sets my teeth on edge,
the thing that sends me from the image in the mirror,
the thing that shocks me for the first time every time,
is that God-forsaken scar.
Reminds
of the birth that almost wasn’t
and the epidural that didn’t
and the unready infant that wouldn’t
and her sister, arrived, barely breathing, 18 minutes prior
and the way we’d have all three died in a different time.
Asks
why that’s the thing I got from mom
when I’d have much rather had her legs
(although I can still tease her with “switched at birth,”
because there ain’t no genes in a scar).
Signifies
what I did first time so perfectly,
second time adequately, but third time so ineptly.
Damn cut. For the little mean one.
Who had enough fight to survive
her untimely arrival
on the edge of the knife.
This poem give fresh voice to childbirth, what it does to our bodies, how it connects to our own mothers in ways one might not expect and how it connects us to all of history. I should like very much to meet this child who arrived on the edge of the knife.
A brave and sharp-edged poem — with a very happy ending!
Annmarie! Glorious!
Oh Annmarie, this was painful to read. I hope those moments of feeling inept are fleeting.
This poem made me hold my breath while reading it. Every time I think about it, I hold my breath again. Jean is exactly right. “Glorious!”
Brilliant!
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