Baby
At the hospital they
know about death. I knew
about death in the bathtub
when I stood up ears ringing
vision spotting and the blood
running down my leg.
I knew about death with my gut.
With my little baby: glut
of cells and tissue scraped out
like a tumor. I didn’t know she
was there until she started to kill me.
The hospital knows of the unborn.
Knows there is no such thing
as original sin. Baby says:
Let me have this organ. Just this
one. Let me eat. I see picnic Sundays
fat cheeks dappled sunlight
strawberry flowers: somebody else’s
life. Life doesn’t begin
at conception because it never
begins. It is always. Already
she was laughing with me as,
high on Dilaudid, I joked
with the nurses. She had my sense
of humor for those four or five
weeks. Baby and I, we would
have liked each other. I’ve forgiven
her for trying to kill me
and she has forgiven me
for letting them cut out the organ
she was growing in. The wrong
organ. Death doesn’t begin either.
It is the other always. Baby came
to tell me something, and then
she went on her way.
Jaye Nasir is a writer based in Portland, Oregon whose work blurs the line between the real and the unreal. Her poems, essays, and fiction have appeared in many small publications, both local and international, including Moss: A Journal of the Pacific Northwest, The Penn Review, and Antithesis Journal.