When it finally happened,
when the girl broke free,
pushed out, doctor
elbow deep in me,
massaging a weeping
uterus—it would be weeks
later between diaper changes,
a hardened umbilicus fell.

Listless from lack of sleep
I missed its leap, sixty
centimeters of legacy
cut to a stump,
this physical keep—
my body’s ancestral store,
snipped, shuttered, lost.

By the second child, a boy,
I knew. He would be the last.
So I kept a bloodshot eye
on the striated yellow
hardening knot,
this sieve, this tether,
triad of blood vessels.
How crucial this lifeline
from fetus to placenta to me,
how essential I was
each breath, each bite,
until I was not.

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