Allison Cundiff<\/strong><\/p> \/\/\/ Dear Baby Allison Cundiff Dear baby who is crippling my own, low left sciatica baby, dawn sick water baby, belly cramp in the deep baby tailbone fracturing baby perineum splitting of a girl baby: While you were busy being born, your mother, her once tiny waist, lay, smallish in the bed, her blood pressure dropping, … <\/p>\n
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Dear baby who is crippling my own,
\nlow left sciatica baby,
\ndawn sick water baby,
\nbelly cramp in the deep baby
\ntailbone fracturing baby
\nperineum splitting of a girl baby:
\n
\nWhile you were busy being born, your mother,
\nher once tiny waist, lay, smallish in the bed,
\nher blood pressure dropping,
\ntwenty-two hours into labor.
\nIt was three am and I was alone at her feet, rubbing, kneading.
\nThe alarms going off, the nurses in scrubs rushed in,
\nand I thought you should know
\nI thought of how I might make myself die soon after.
\nI knew I would if anything
\nhappened to that girl.
\nHere\u2019s what I remember:
\n
\nYears ago when my hair was a heavy braid down my back there was a boy who would come to the hall down the street from our gravel road. He was tall and not handsome. He would dance with every girl. His feet moved so fast he seemed to blur, all the lines of him collapsing into makeshift stage where the man who combed his hair in between every song, the lines of tonic neat and their scent strong in the barn lights. One night I snuck out late to meet him. I got dressed at ten pm, smoking a Kent stolen from my mother\u2019s purse (one to smoke while at home, one for the walk to the hall). Before though, I stood with my hair in curlers and in my bra and looked at the line of clothes in my closet and chose the skirt that would look best when his arm circled my waist. When I was that age I didn\u2019t know that one day I\u2019d sit rubbing the feet of my daughter giving birth to you, her heart in trouble.
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\nIn a northern Missouri college town there\u2019s a house on South Franklin I\u2019d pass when walking home from the library late at night. The house had been boarded up for ten years, no one inside. I\u2019d always make the sign of the cross when walking past since sometimes you could see a shadow in the window on the third floor and a person there reading in low light.
\n
\nIt feels good to light a match, to push your hand deep into a good glove.
\nThere are things that don\u2019t feel good too.
\nOne day the girls\u2019 pet fish got lost in the disposal and I had to
\nput my hand deep into the hole to cup his damp floundering,
\nbut he lived. My husband\u2019s hand was too big, and he just looked at me,
\nexpecting me to let it die. But I did reach in.
\nI do like the earthy smell of the slouching puppy
\nlifted from his cedar warmth.
\n
\nLike your body, from my daughter\u2019s.
\nI think of you born now,
\nand the girl\u2019s heart turned out alright
\nand I tell myself
\nI should write a poem about that too.
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Allison Cundiff is a Professor of English in St. Louis. Her publications include three books of poetry, Just to See How It Feels<\/em>, Otherings<\/em>, and In Short, A Memory of the Other on a Good Day<\/em> as well as articles in Pragmatic Buddhist<\/em>, The St. Louis Post Dispatch<\/em>, Feminist Teacher<\/em>, In Layman’s Terms<\/em>, and Chariton Review<\/em>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"