Petitioning the Patron Saint of Childbirth

There is a place not far from here where

two rivers meet the sea, a shore dark

and pitted as a caiman’s back.

My thoughts drift here when I pray to you,

to swollen water and lonely spit,

tide-risen belly of a mangrove god.

Every white room I enter is untruth.

The doctor is not my maker. He can barely keep

my bones together. He cannot sew me

into wholeness, even with your holy medallion

round my neck. Oh saint, there is so much

I cannot tell you.

Perhaps I will confide in Xochiquetzal,

goddess of childbirth, mother of ocelots and flowers.

Perhaps I will write letters

to my own mother with invisible pigment

made of colostrum and brine.

But these words are all seeds, hard-shelled

and deep-veined like nutmeg, falling to earth

in careless handfuls. I know this forest of silence

is of my own making.

Now what can you say to me

that the wild Atlantic has not?

I’ve already heard the one about

everything happening for a reason.

Dear saint, I know you will not

take me in your pristine arms

and make me weightless, even if I beg.

Behind my eyes at night there is only water,

my unborn child inside me a turn of turtles

flailing in the deep, crossing the unknown.