At Six Months

[wpaudio url=”/audio/7_9/Chelko.mp3″ text=”listen to this poem” dl=”0″]

I feel the eel of her

skim the undersurface

of my skin. It’s

alive. Now, I imagine

everyone I meet emerging,

rumpled and wet, betwixt legs.

The birthing room dank

with the breath

between screams.

Shrill.

We are bonded,

those of us who have, for whatever reason,

cried together. The cords between us

variously thick

and glistening. It’s tough

to be alive. Stuffed as we are

with this stuff.

No dimple of innocence

at the crest of my skull

(but if I open my mouth wide

there is that soft dip

that opens in front of my ear-

so I’m not all armor). The body

entombs itself. My mother

has shrunk an inch and a half in a year-

her bones growing

inexplicably dense, rarified.

Now even she is

hard to the touch. I undressed

my grandmother once

months before, at ninety,

she died. Now you can see how terrible

old people look, she said. Her skin

iridescent: an insect wing in crumpled rest

which could, at any moment,

span the room.