God carved the virgin from this
stone, apparently. My heart was
made in the dark of my mother; her
body surrounded the start of my own
—the way the earth holds the
horizon. Birth is the beginning of an
echo. In this divinity of dark, God’s
daughter won’t take shape for me—
like the woman trapped in my own
body cage. I yearn to give birth to
her. Anchored here, we bend our
knees to stay steady. We point up at
rock—at where the sky should be—
while our boat rocks in the wake of
another.