Water Babies
Once upon a time
there was water
It filled everything. Spaces. Places in between toes.
It came to her in plenty. Placentas filled with blue. Bellies filled with too much – water after a meal that leaves her hungry but nauseas. There is no room for air.
It begins with dreams.
Not crowded. Hugged. A miniature of the Twins. Not facing outwards but facing each other. Swimming in blueness. Blue she has only thought of – starry starry blue. Swirling blue. Sleeping blue. Both hugged in blue, hugging the other in the softness of a wall-less womb.
Between them, their curls awoke, reaching for other stray strands to braid with. Braiding and curling silk and rope. Keeping them steady in blue.
In the blues.
He sank. Lower and Lower. Deeper into where should could not swim. It was too shallow. She tripped over the waves. He fell into the pillow of nightfall, she was of dawn. As he sank, he tugged and tore. Her hair flew sprawled around her not used to having no shape.
Her curls straightened in an attempt to float.
Nothing.
She drowned in the shades of the bruises on her body from all the times he tried to carve his name into her skin.
He is blue.
The music becomes meaningless. The notes of sorrow linked with so so long ago are not his own. He does not own the word. Nor the music. His music doesn’t match the sorrow of blues. His sorrow broke on her skin in kisses with too much love which he did not know where to keep.
She kept it in bottles.
Crying her own rain, she stored it for days of drought. Bottled. Mineral. From the belly of her eye.
Every bottle carries memory.
He is here. He was here. Once upon a memory. Once upon a dream. In a dimmed bedroom in a narrow bed hugging a window. Water bottles almost empty on bedside tables and rolling with a few lonely breezes that pass by, intrusive. She day dreamed of becoming the other twin.
"We were Siamese twins"
Her dream passed him by. Warmth touched him leaving him shivering. Ovum and sperm did not hold. The Twins never came. There was the endless braiding of hair that never holds in water. Ropes broke once the knot was tied.
The Twins did not come. She did not birth them. She lay hoping they would take shape. Hoping her body and his would curl into each other. Frantic, in a last plea she pushes the babies together.
They break into red between her thighs. His eyes, waiting for something, peeling her skin, searching for the bones.
Showers of blessings.
She knows the love of rain drops now on her face like she longed for his finger tips. Rain drops are not disappointing. At first there is too little but the thirst is gone. She just stands damp with the waiting. She stands watered.
Baraka – too sweet
too sweet
She stops buying the slim bottles he doesn't like. She stops drinking the sweetened water with blessings from the earth. She pretends fullness to pass his judgment. Sweetness can be found elsewhere. Not just in drops from the belly of the Mother.
Baraka
After midnight, under covers of white, through the drapery, the thunder wakes her. She wakes up. Suddenly. Opens her eyes. Looks at the breath rising and falling in undeclared pain and shivers beside her. There are no bottles here to choose from.
Her toes climb out into the cold, shake the fear out of bed as she peeks into gray.
The roaring welcomes her in his arms. There is no choice but to go for long desired sweetness. She wavers on the ridge. She has long forgotten the stroke for survival.
There is no blue. There is only water.
Only her. And a broken cord.
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