Passover
Tara Marie Gilbert-Brever
This spring my friends grew
batches of babies
in time for the tulips.
The atmosphere
is heated by the hatched
spirits; the summer
is hurried
by the sum
of new fingers.
What was so certain
about months ago,
why did touch fall heavier
and last all the way
into fresh lives?
How was so much lady-
skin bitten quick, hitting
it close to bone, hiding
the scab out of reach?
Last summer I was passed
over-no souls in wait
to chew through to me.
My friends pass their children
into my lap;
my body fists around such small
flesh, but monthly pushes
out the juices
that would harden to this.
Why don’t you have one?
She’d have your almond
eyes...
but I will not follow
my friends, loose the strings
around my instinct,
cup the kisses, pool
them in the home
between my legs.
Why does air have its way
with blood, scaring
it red? What is it about blue,
that it wastes so fast,
why can’t it take root;
why does sky
steal the eyes
out of babies?
This morning, like every
other 28, I held the pill
on my tongue for a second,
tasting the “selfish”
sweet shield. I bow
out of the power to create,
to pour my tangled
contents into clean
bodies, vessels that might founder.
