Written by Gretchen FIlart
Content Warning: Birth Complication
For everything hinges on light
after a long darkness. I still remember the wide grin
of the stretcher clenching my splayed body.
Black-lunged scabs I tucked under my scalpelled belly,
a trade for your sunsmile. Every mouth
in the room the wide, dewy lips of flowers meditating
on their first morning miracle. Mine
praying for the doctor’s hands to find you
blushed after unfraying the fleshy umbilical
cord strangling your neck.
How all the world’s loose change fell
upon my soul’s laughless pocket
when she said,
Your baby cried.
Her skin is pink.
.
Gretchen Filart is a Best of the Net and Pushcart Prize-nominated poet and essayist from the Philippines. Her confessional pieces draw from love, motherhood, healing, nature, and intersections and have received distinction from Phoebe’s Spring Poetry Contest and Navigator’s Travel Writing Competition. Connect with her on Twitter, and Instagram @gretchenfilart, or via her website, ourworldinwords.com. She is usually friendly.