I woke up beside you
A deep sadness
Years and years of rowing towards the land
Against an offshore wind
Farther and closer to each other
The force of habit and built-up affection
Heavy sun-caked mud bricks
cracked under the strain of disillusion
After I had lost my father
and left the fatherland
accused in the old country
of not being what I appeared to be,
you were my new land, my anchor
They called me temptress, daughter of Lilith
Femme fatale and phallic
A male mind in a female body
It was my artistic pretense, or ambition
And my poor coordination at domestic chores
in addition to the above mentioned
Fatal attractiveness
that made me looks suspicious, dangerous even
But you did not seem to mind
Unafraid-unsuspecting
Of the untethered orphan
In my forties, we had babies
torn from my insides, even though
they were ripe and ready to go
The fruits of my entrails clang to my breast
greedy for the endless supply of milk
Homebound and tied up
in the labyrinth of matrescence
I felt it was the end of me
the generating of new life
The eruption of ravenous beings
Digging holes in your dreams
Night after night, day after day
was bad timing: You were worried
about your business, about money
You left me floating in a limbo
orphaned mother of babies hitched to
the drifting ice of my mind,
their only chance of survival
My children grown and hair thinning
I thought the euthanasia of my womb
would make me less than a woman
closer to a man, perhaps
But No. I am still me, cisgender as hell
Although others in the old country
did not think so
I woke up beside you
with such a tender heartache
we have grown in many ways closer and apart
Out of love and back
The “back” always
catches me off guard
I still do not expect to love you so much
Anne-Marie Delaunay-Danizio is a French-born visual artist and writer. She is the recipient of three art related master’s degrees, and has exhibited her artworks throughout New England. Her essay “The Turquoise Mountains” has been recently published in Minerva Rising Press: The Keeping Room.
