Reimbursement

Birth is tantamount to a promise, a well wish
from a weeping cock and an opening womb.
The inspectors should have come,
with iron bars for your brain
to bang you into shape
and a writ for your life as tight as a frame-up.
That would have made it right.
But they missed the blood over the door;
your clever tongue licked the jamb clean.

Let me back in to her, this is my petition;
you loom too large with architecture -
already breaking my toes for the bandages.

None of my colleagues heard me yelp the air in;
I didn't hear them, then.
When we writhe out in your slick mess
we're at a loss, a panicked loss;
genesis grabs the roots of the senses
and yanks the strands out in a rush.
(Later they came with tulips,
the gasps banging them together like pins.)

I promised you curtsies, too young
and consented in complicity to hold back
the landslide of flint these flesh walls kept bound up.
But quick, look up! A hush falls.
Now the beams have broken
and we burn, embracing, our claws alike;
we fall arranged around each other,
a nick running a tide along my back
deftly
neatly
opening the clear seam...

...at last.