For Leilah

“How has your c-section impacted you?”
There is a numbness.
His touch no longer welcome
My body no longer a holy place, a sanctuary
Now a war-zone, battle-scarred.

There is a shimmering anger,
a dark undertow which drags on my heels
follows me like an unrelenting ravenous wolf
a pursuer through a waking dream..

There is a sadness…no,
a deep rending grief that tears through my flesh
more deeply than the scar belies.

There is a misshapen hole
(just the size of my dream-birth)
in my heart.

I had a cesarean,
But no one told me that the knife
would cut me this far open.