Retro/In(tro)-

spection

 

inchmeal (adv)

              by inches, inch by inch, by small portions, little by little.

inanition, (n)

              the action or process of emptying; the condition of being

              empty; spec. the exhausted condition resulting from want

              or insufficiency of nourishment

 

Days and days before my labor was to be made its own open

and shut case feeble cracks seemed somewhere inside of me,  

 

somewhere climbing beside the baby, and were letting clean

amniotics out through to the open world.  Slow motion drain,

 

a sudden crush of pain and the substance was on my thigh

and busy, and ashamed, I’d mistaken it for pee.  I was mad

 

at myself for not keeping it in, keeping it clean, the fault obviously,

OBVIOUSLY! mine.  The baby seemed peaceful in this

 

dwindling sea, tight swaddle that he was.  Imagine the scent

of the sea was between my legs, a tide finding the full bowl

 

of the cove of my pelvis and pressure cracking what all it would. 

And the illuminating moon was a tired eye, milky with clouds,

 

closing the shoals, slowing the motor, bow nudging

the summits of the rocks, rudder coming undone, invisible,

 

underneath it all