During pregnancy, cells cross
through the flat disk of placenta
in both directions—mother
gives the fetus her body
and takes it back. They aren’t one.
They’re separate as hands freeing
the wood stick of the trapeze.
But parting, something gets left
like marks on a white doorframe.
Thus I’ve never left my mother
or the darker earth of her blood,
leaped from a rock into water
believing the water could take
all of me. Never broke apart
our white nidus, our atoms of string.
I who left open the door
to the amber crossing—
I have crossed, yes. But stayed
in the river that I crossed,
blood sparkling with cells
like scales. Like another woman.
