dicentra spectabilis

When I was ten

someone told me

“Right now, your uterus

is the size of a small strawberry”.

I thought of red staining the tongue,

seeds scraping the bumps on its underside.

Today the memory came back all wrong

pacing along double-lines staining pink

as fruit on tissue left out too long.

Out of season, yet it is the size

of a strawberry.

I cry the way you cry

when you already know

what you have to do.

I fear this the way one is afraid of certain rooms.

It presses on that voice, that kitchen,

the calm cruelty of information

how easily they told me

what grows where.

I try with all I have not to imagine its roots.

think “this is my body” like a spell that works

if you say it a thousand times.

Somewhere, summer strawberries are being

washed, hulled, sugared, loved.

And people say

how small, how sweet,

Baby? Pour a cup of tea for me-

lavender and belladonna, drift me off to sleep.

The only comfort left, my face against the steam,

warm is all that I want to be.

I was at the cliffside last night

a bit off-centre, but I promise I was alright.

Run a bath, I'm so cold, baby.

Some people call it a lady-in-a-bath, because if you pull the flower apart carefully enough, you can make a woman appear.

When I was pulled apart, I stitched my wounds closed into the shape of this flower.

I have spent years trying to decide which one I am.