There’s a key in my closet door
and a woman in my room,
reading her palm.

Outside, a whirlwind welcomes rain,
twirls on tiptoes as sugarcane husks
swing from the hem of her skirt.

The woman inside divines,
tells me of the hole in my half-life,
reaches for my hair.

I stroke her back.

So this is it, I ask,
returning to the window.

Heavy rains have reduced cans
and sugarcane husks to a joyless jig.

I’ll dance for you, soothsayer says,
flashing Tarot cards between her thighs.

But all that can soothe has already been said.
I stand up straight again and smooth
down the sheets of my single bed.

That night
the waves wouldn’t return
to sea’s dark womb
but thrashed about
like insolent children,
playing with everything
in their paths.

That was the night we stood
together like split reed,
swaying in warm sand.
Lovers born at noon
lost in the fruitfulness
of a mischievous moon

We stood bare-
footed on plastic chairs,
cheering on minstrels
who beat their guitars
and strummed their drums,
eyes lowered in homage to Trench Town.

O how they sang for us!
Spurred on by spinning feet on every seat,
they steered us down the aisle,
towards every good omen
we were destined to meet.

Then we walked to the tip of Yemoja’s nose.
Her breath circled us
and swelled into a pale billow of smoke.
Was it she who blew us into that unlikely embrace?
Or did we plot the stirrings of our waists,
the quiet rustlings of shuffled lace?

You open your mouth and speak of me.
This is my daughter, my Thumbelina,
my baby girl, my Shakespearina.

I stand by your side like a portrait.
Blink when no one is looking,
scream when no one is listening.

Look at the lines on my face, mother.
Touch the long, deep strokes,
the smudgings, the faded shades.

Lay your finger upon my lips, mother.
Feel the blood-deep bruises,
glossed over with purple.

You see, mother, I was the girl propped
against a pillar, little feet dangling by my side.
I was your baby girl then too, wasn’t I, mother?

Where were you when he widened my mouth
with his tongue and spat down my throat,
licked my ears and made me promise not to tell?

I wouldn’t have told you anyway.
You were a stickwoman with scribbled-on hair,
your forehead a gathering of zigzag lines.

Strange it is how the morningyou spend a lifetime trying to forgetis the one you yearn to remember most.Morning at the ward.
Women coo-calm infants
fresh from the womb.
Nurses, heavy of hip,
roll around beds
with padded hands.
All morning the mantra: breast is best.
All morning they latch open mouth
to swollen breast.
I am in awe of the worm
I spewed that morning,
I watch it squirm
at the unrest of our world:
jolt at every whimper,
jump at every whine.
I wish I could swallow it,
save it from earthly rustlings.
But by afternoon,
incessant cry and tear-glazed eye
tell me my august visitor
is a task master.
He who must be fed like a seed,
he whose bottom must be wiped,
whose suckling cuts my nipple
and makes me bleed.
Mid afternoon, the bathroom is free
for me to wash away the shame of birth.
‘Clean up for Daddy!’ a nurse teases.
That word rattles a silenced bell clapper
and my insides ring.
I kiss Augustus quickly and bolt
the door behind me.
The silence of the bathroom asserts itself.
Echoes flush me towards the drain
but I stand firm.
Then, quite unexpectedly,
pain begins to seep from every pore:
yowl begets wail begets howl
for heart wounds that will never scab,
for the seething sore of afterbirth.