Bronze - Danielle Selber

The labor bed.

I’m meant to solemnly revere this place

where life spins from within

not revival or even resuscitation

but goddamn creation

the labor linens are fresh parchment

I smell smoked sage

see my mother’s worried collarbone

the greenest grass outside my window

I know labor is sorcery

I lay obscured under the sediment

potion’s smoke tumbling

as I create a world from my dust and ashes

they have done it hunched in caverns

in tents, at sea

or my grandmother, disappearing behind the nearest tree

emerging with my eldest uncle

The labor bed –

it is the place which looks most like holy ground

toes curling around sacred dirt

waters rushing to separate from earth

but I never found god there

until

my third

came rushing through me

a hunted, captured husk torn in two

just before a dawn

screaming to the firmament

chaos, then void –

a being who was not now was

and as my mother summoned ancestors in mumbled tongues and I poured with sweat and the births of one thousand before us reverberated through mountains of time and I meant to pray but all I could think was

at last

at last

she is

my last.

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Danielle Selber is an American-Israeli who lives and writes in Philadelphia. She works as a matchmaker for those not traditionally served by Jewish dating spaces. Danielle lives with her wife, who is a trans woman, and their three surprisingly cool kids. Portfolio: danielleselber.squarespace.com.