xy

XY

you were born red faced and already turning  (lifted,
true, through the unzipped uterus) and who knew

you were turning that sort of blue though only on the inside
where nobody could see you (you were so

quiet being newly alive at least on the outside) who knew
or wanted to that you were dying in there dying

almost and as as as soon as you began

to swallow: swallow air swallow milk swallow

anesthesia all of every nothing that was a you and me

was a we recovering: what the nurse counting, naming tools
so she didn't stitch them in

reminded me that they say how lust needs to become
lusty it needs to become

hunger when lungs loco-
mote with flames the first burn an untinctured

Pentecost that all babies who live past being blue need
to survive, especially 

even on the inside (you did it you did but it took you

weeks of breathing and heart beating and not

eating and maybe even to make up your mind to make it
to surrender even more than most only those few days old:

to wriggle shhhh beneath the scalpel Peter Rabbit

and the precision of a pediatric surgeon and her incision

exposing your blue compacted glacier of a colon, all those micro
organisms dying into the trap of ultramarine, a pressure only

Vermeer perfected and died knowing and you made
generously inside of you so generously inside of you.