AFTERBIRTH

What do you mean, that April was already

the cruellest month? Impossible.

I was the complete breach whose kinked

and wrinkled eye quivered the enormous

thighs that propelled the monster

who for a brief spell was her smile

which alas, morphed into afterbirth,

messy gob of purple brackish thing

she wore into that muggy summer

and henceforth and henceforth.

Cruel is not the word --

something more treacherous

would get at it

the hard-set face chiseled into beauty

by nature and stone by nurture

aggrieved that I, awkward spawn

enmeshed in muck

would never be some lithe reflection,

but just a luckless duck.

But there were those first few weeks,

so the bard was wrong

June was far more cruel because

that ended the sleepwalk

and she could see the damage done.

Half a century's flown like giddy geese

southward summoned;

afterbirth has sagged like all else

and now hides in a designer bra

as though a chest there lurks

where there was none before

or something like a chest or,

most absurd of all, a heart.

copyright Julianza Shavin