His Departure Comes Over Me
by Karen Elizabeth Sharpe
I was a woman at the edge of the world.
Electricity’s spark felt uninspired.
Unpaid bills lost their fright.
Azure skies hadn’t mattered.
For months I had shunned the doctor’s
sonic wands of prediction, welcomed
the mystery of my sweeping, swelling belly
its omnipotent presence.
In the chill hospital room
I pushed and heaved like an animal
knocking at the blue space between mountains
nearly clawing the baby out of myself
the crown a moon cresting bigger and bigger
and me gowned, splayed raw, vulnerable as grief
my body releasing the pulse of his life
thrumming its belonging
The midwife spreading our placenta
between her hands, a pink, ebullient
aurora, a big-banged constellation of veins
bloody and blazoned, a whole galaxy exploding.
Electricity’s spark felt uninspired.
Unpaid bills lost their fright.
Azure skies hadn’t mattered.
For months I had shunned the doctor’s
sonic wands of prediction, welcomed
the mystery of my sweeping, swelling belly
its omnipotent presence.
In the chill hospital room
I pushed and heaved like an animal
knocking at the blue space between mountains
nearly clawing the baby out of myself
the crown a moon cresting bigger and bigger
and me gowned, splayed raw, vulnerable as grief
my body releasing the pulse of his life
thrumming its belonging
The midwife spreading our placenta
between her hands, a pink, ebullient
aurora, a big-banged constellation of veins
bloody and blazoned, a whole galaxy exploding.
Karen Elizabeth Sharpe is from Rutland, Massachusetts, where she lives with her partner and two pandemic rescue dogs. Karen is a poetry editor at The Worcester Review and author of Prayer Can Be Anything, (Finishing Line Press) and This Late Afternoon (Dunn & Co.). Her poems have or will soon appear in On the Seawall, The MacGuffin, SWWIM, Fourth River, Split Rock Review, Mom Egg Review, and Halfway Down the Stairs, among others.