46. Labor

She bent over dishtowels

brown against her teeth

holding her screams

holding the girl in her belly.

.

He held a stopwatch

clicking at time,

ballpeen hammers on brass.

.

Thirty seconds ate the earth

and the green in her blind eye

and her cervix was eaten by scorpions.

Thirty seconds ate the nails off her fingers

and pulled all the hair back into her head.

She vomited in the sink to make room.

.

He held the stopwatch

clicking at time,

dentist scraping eye teeth.

.

She suffocated on her cervix 

trying to claw into her womb

where the only new life in her body

scraped hard, digging to emerge

as a girl.

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