The Labour Dance

This is how I'm imagining labour based on pre-natal classes [I'll let you know fairly soon how it compares to the real thing, from my 'helper' perspective]:


Labour

You’re in the marathonic power of labour,
the opaque shadowing of your membrane networks.
Splashing bags of waters onto your clean floor
leaves you spewing complaints about contractions
and the impending doom of allegations,
or is it obligations.

You will get this baby in your arms,
the nurse informs you, her lips taut
like the memory of a cigarette,
her voice spilled gravel on lovers’ lane.
Now push!

You scream your war cry.
You sweat methane,
crush my hands into broken blisters,
bouncing on your birth ball,
under a small slice of sea.
Mah! there! Fuckerrrrrr!
You scream, and it can only
be directed at me.

But the baby responds with a cry,
while I can only whimper
as this marathon miracle 1st prize
passes through my hands, head-first
into the rivulet between your breasts.
It’s bloody blue and conical,
with double bum-flaps exposed
to your exhalation wind.

As lips encircle nipple,
suck so hard it blocks my fears
of tyrannical fatherhood,
a smile washes over my body.

I kiss the miniscule foot at your belly.
Just sculpted lines between mother and child
have blurred and blended again,
leaving a singular hope.



And this is life in the lead-up time:



The Dance

This rhythm is ours:
1 – 2 – 3 – 4.
We don’t want your structure,
don’t want your counting rituals.

It’s a unified sway:
A – B – C – D.
Whatever symbols you show me,
can’t represent how hard it is.

No words for our truth:
cloves – cinnamon – cardamom – nutmeg.
Sugar pulls it all together,
we swallow when it’s just right.

Pregnant curves roll into my angles:
her – cats – children – home.
Burning logs and minor keys,
deaf to television punditry.