Thaumatrope
K elly He a r d
The details of miscarriage do not interest me,
not the blood, not the material.
Rather, the metamorphosis: pregnant, not pregnant, the unblocked stage between.
I sat down to watch the ocean and the tide collapsed at my feet.
A thaumatrope whirls to trick the eyes, two images blurred into one.
Heads, I am the lunar cycle, a waxing body.
Tails, lunar surface, cold and arid.
The retinas are more fallible than the imagination.
Spoiler:
the body is always more fallible
than the imagination.
Someone bleeds and braces for this mourning.
Someone folds pajamas the length of your hand.
If I turn fast enough I am both at once.
At this of all moments I forget my lines.
In the costume of a mother I hesitate,
Illuminated by a selfishness to which I have no right.
The center of my orbit is
Unapparent.
I am poorly
Reviewed. Are you pregnant
should be a simple question.
What kind of woman cannot control the tides?
I will never be one or the other again.
There is a ghost now in the workings of things.
Yet in this dizzying improv there is shelter.
Here, in vertigo’s lilting embrace.
I am one and the other,
in this neutral ground between the spotlights,
A new creature.
29
Cauldron Anthology