In the still, gray water my life is born in figurines.
My right foot forever bears a stigmata from the accident—
The streetcar—not Diego.
My heartlines, my left side, bear his scar.
But no children.
Blood flows from my womb, painting the water carmine.
My parents should be grandparents
and I identify them in the water, too.
What is woman without her child?
What is woman who loves woman?
I’m stuck inside the bathtub now,
Ophelia in a porcelain brook.
They’ve replaced my ribs with metallic bones that sink
Like stones.
Like all of the earth, sea shells and sparrows.
I rise in fire, formed like igneous rock,
As a skyscraper, because man does not bow to what
Came before him
but builds on it.
I rise fully, in glass and steel.
I rise faster than my ribs which
Wish to cage me.
I rise faster.
I paint my toenails carmine, I reclaim my blood.
I paint my life in the water, pain blooming on my knee.
I paint the pain filling the porcelain.
She’s in the painting now,
I am reborn.
Life after death.
That’s what the water gave me.
Unsigned and undated;
In the still, gray water we are all born.
It looks like Hell,
Yet It is anything but sad.