when we push it

The vibration shakes me in the night, and when it comes I know. I pull my carriage upright, like sinking in water, but reverse. The cab gives it's honk and I duck into black seats. The driver is tired and something in me wants to offer his importance.  "A baby is coming."  He smiles, squinting through the rearview, and then a plucked forehead - ("Yes?")

He flies through the night, sleeping villages below the bridge; I look down at my watch, and out to passing lights. The sound of spinning tires, a slit of window pulls the night through my nose.

Soft and easy come the brakes, the home looks quiet, curtains drawn. The driver stares up at it in wonder, and we both marvel at things unknown.  I am in love with this moment, for it terrifies my heart, I feel it in my eyes like love mixed with pain - the second of reckoning I face my truest self.  And I wonder about courage, of patience and calm.  I ask myself how I got here, and what I know of pain.

I slip through the door, to find her standing in the bathtub. Liquid running down her legs, shaking, and I pause in the doorway to wait. She rocks her hips and looks me in the eye. The room is glowing, her vibration fluttering the walls.  She permeates the orchestra of creaking floorboards and cracked ceiling. There are women all around, and a papa so in love, carrying water, bringing towels, offering tea, making food. We begin pulsing to her rhythm, on a ship swaying to the impenetrable ocean. She moves into the water and we enter with her, seven imaginary bodies beside her, she is never alone.

And when she begins to push it, she grabs hold of me tightly. Her heart is my heart and I am in it like nothing I have ever known. The smell of birth and death together, there is blood, so much blood. Her sounds are getting lower, she is groaning, calling out. In a moment of panic, or perhaps a final invigoration, she arches upright, reaches down, and pulls the babe from her body. There are sighs, and cheering, tears dripping softly into water. I sink back, just a little, to make way for her moment. I slip silently into wallpaper, and inhale the room. I leave after dawn has long since passed, and when my feet hit the porch, I finally cry.