sometimesihatemycat

Gestation takes its own time

The waiting becomes unbearable

Yet it must be borne

Each creature with its own course

In the beginning, only a suggestion

Of new life arising

Hunger, nausea, preparatory anticipation

Chemicals coursing from brain to body and back again

I have a nightmare

That a beast grows inside me

Wraps itself around itself, over and over and over

Until its spikes and scales push aside my organs

While it claws its way out of my gut

And uses my skin to hook and drag its weight

Around my waist and up my spine

Each vertebrae a bony rung for its rising

Until it whispers its name on the back of my neck

Searing spittle punctuating each syllable

Ash and sulfur swirling in my ears and up my nostrils

Seeping into my skull, clouding and crowding out

Suddenly it spreads its still slick wings and shoves

Using my body as a fleshy springboard

Carelessly taking with it ragged pieces of me under its talons

I wake and shake

Away the acrid stench and molten fog

Unsure of what is being formed inside me

I sit up and breathe and find

I am satisfied to be creating anything at all

Whatever it becomes

I gladly let it rip and scar

Leave me different from before

I will let it take my DNA with it when it goes

Until then I gestate, and wait

–by me

Celestial Birthing by Tania Marie

Inspired by my daughter, her dragons, and the following quote,
“Sometimes the ideas that mean the most to you will feel true long before you can quite formulate them.” —Pinsky

Posted in Body, Meditation, Motherhood, Poetry, Writing
Tags: Birth, Dragon, Gestation, Ideas, Life, Nightmare, poetry, Writing Process