Birthing Monsters

by Siobhan Carroll

 

A young girl writhes in damp sheets, ghost stories

pressed to her forehead. In the womb,

life quickens a future as yet unimagined.

At nineteen, she is unmarried.  Her lover’s wife

has not yet drowned herself. She wonders if this birth

will be the death of her.

Later you may wonder where it came from,

if the misplaced kick of her unborn child

spurred this tale. If the spark struck off

cobblestones slick with revolutionary blood.

Perhaps she assembled her story quietly –

an arm, a limb. Perhaps

it was not her creation at all

but a tale told by her mother, her sisters,

paper corpses scraping the bottom of history,

their eyes eaten by crabs.

Perhaps the tale was born the day

she survived the birth and her child

didn’t. That night she dreamed

of rubbing its body back to life.

Where did it come from?

 

Does it matter? She wakes in the dark,

trying to ward off her future with hideous cries.