One Winter’s Line
Between underpants and saggy bra,
she hangs her fallopian tubes out to dry.
They dangle like a pair of tan tights,
dancer’s legs in the wind.
She bends, reaches inside the basket,
mistakes her vagina for an old sock.
She remembers the rainbow fleeces
she used to buy her son for years,
in ascending sizes, how he stroked
their softness, called them his babies.
There is more time with him gone.
She shakes out her uterus, smooths
the creases in the sun, scrabbles
in the peg bucket, finds the missing ovaries,
hidden by broken plastic, dead leaves.
She cups the eggs inside her palm;
feels the echo of her Grandma’s womb.
Knows this line ends here.
Ali Murphy is a poet, family psychotherapist and mindfulness teacher. She has been accepted for publication/ published by Ink, Sweat and Tears, The High Window, Leeds Poetry Festival Anthology, Bread and Roses, Black Nore and Dawn Treader.