how the ozone separates from a place
I was contemplating my
belly as the place where
reason, foresight and map-making
join such other ancient fires
In hindsight, one remembers the
starch of the sheets and the brown
plastic food trays. How my breasts were
swollen, bare and sore, drip
dripping the hours, that day
I’d birthed new places, though
it would take me years to know
the pierce of those needles passing
through me was the only kind of time that
regrows itself, replacing, giving. Another
set of lungs, draining as a sea-creature
beached ashore, began to pump that sterile room’s
air. And to think that she and I had passed
between us, some ozone of our own, until our
secret highway was left to brew, left to
stay warm and wet in new blood, to
breathe womb-fire again