Four Weeks

How can I sleep when inside me a poppy seed
stretches its wings? Brainless, seething, once I stewed
in my mother's soup, and now I consider
how to tell my mother what is happening
to me. Ma, now I am two
organisms, now I can't drink booze,
now I'm a hovercraft for the underworld,
I'm a hitched ride earthside, a wagon wheel wobbling
up patched dirt road, a hollow
bulb, a rabbit hole. I'm flooded with double
the blood. I'm busy building a skeleton.
Ma, it's spooky how my whole body
fit in your whole body, and now my body
builds another. We get so busy in the civilized
wearing of raincoats and swatting of flies
we forget: I was once curved like macaroni,
pithy like a pip, I was once not-here
and then I was here, busy contracting UTIs
and spitting out baby teeth. The order
gets wonky. My life feels collapsed, a quasar
and a fast car, ballerina rioting in her jewelry box.
Ma, tell me what will happen.
Will I be okay? Will I still
be me? What does it mean
to become a portal, to permit birth
and death in the room of my skin?