Gestation Period
These days have become a knife
to pare away my skin. Each morning
the same routine: the child
with her red hair and green eyes watches,
swinging legs as I take my bath.
She folds back the pages of the book
I’m reading so I see nothing past her.
She is stripping my skin away, unravelling
any organic protection: epidermis,
dermis, hypo-epidermis-
each day another layer, the way
that pencil sharpenings peel into a waste bin.
Tomorrow I will cleave the muscle back
to see if I am really there. Then I’ll unknot
the tendons, fold them down like rigging to the bones
until there’s nothing left to part with.
And here will be revealed the ruby casket
rolling back and forth within the hollow crater
of my pelvis. The beautiful inverted pear,
the one place I dare not open, fearing its emptiness.
Wendy Pratt lives and works in North Yorkshire. Her first collection, Nan Hardwick Turns into a Hare was published by Prolebooks in late 2011 and was well received, her next, full sized, collection, Museum Pieces, which will go to print December 2013