Breaching

Emma Stout

Cup your ears to listen to the blackish blue –
the in, out
the echoing crack of knuckles

Do three whole rotations beneath the surface,
under the wavering white
because you can’t seem to grasp Her cord
because the sun circles as you spin in tandem with this Earth

It’s nearly time, but you don’t know that, so you ask to the blackish blue:
If the only walls to this womb are continents, does that make me an orphan?
before Her cord detaches
before the last breathe ascends into the gyrating white

You allow yourself
one more rotation
The amniotic currents of this Earth can’t mother two
The choice is not yours to make

For sinking will not feed the sediment
and the womb you’ve convinced yourself
you belong in
you made as a home

Is not yours to heal.

And as you’ve been spinning in the unrelenting blackish blue,
She has sighed and returned to her morning paper.

And as you’ve been spinning,
She blew craters into the foam of her coffee

And, in doing so, has pushed you to the bottom
and drowned you in Her undulating oceans.