Poet/Mother/Girl

They diagnosed me
As a fantastical wild-whimsied witch—
Those who hide behind their lovers
In shelters decorated with fancy words of devotion.
I’ve craved like they do,
But my love poems do not carry the same weight
No matter how many different ways I birth them
In labour, I’ve delivered rhyming couplets at the end of each of my sonnets;
I’ve had alliteration ripped from me by a doctor’s white-gloved hands;
I’ve cradled the “like” and the “as” in my arms as if they were twins;
And yet my lines are considered simply a chubby baby’s fat.

So dive into my words, that pooling puddle of letters
That lay with me on the birthing bed.
Let me sit back with my pounding feet sore from the motherhood that is writing
And allow my words to flow uninhibited.