someone to lose
a free verse poem for Climacteric: On the Turning Point
“But the attack on women comes above all from capital’s need to destroy what it cannot control and degrade what it most needs for its reproduction. This is the body of women, for even in this age of super-automation, no work and no production would exist except for what is the result of our gestation.” — Silvia Federici, “Witches, Witch-Hunting, and Women”
“She and her children are commodities between two hostile armies. What is their legality? What are they worth? Other to other we are all functions in a system of War.” — Susan Howe, “The Birth-mark”
the 25th birthday
of a girl
i did not give birth to
but who
I recognize as my own
approaches
while
i have not
chosen to
mother my own
seven years
later
i miss her
in bodily ways
under the wide hip
of my love
where i’ve built
a sacramental
pleasure in knowing
non-biological children
i tend the depth
of that longing
a body tortured
by absence
class disparities
like thick black scars
shaped her
leaving
and i,
not-her-mother,
could do
nothing
they have ripped us
apart for ages
and we have
fought valiantly
but there’s no way
around it
not making
could not save me
from loving or
having someone to lose
This piece is one in a series, Climacteric: On the Turning Point, a poetic collaboration for National Poetry Writing Month (#NaPoWriMo) by Samantha Wallen and Michelle Puckett. To read the previous poem in the series, click here. To read the next poem in the series, click here.
Michelle Puckett, MFA is a poet, doula, permaculturalist, coach and Co-Founder of Creating Freedom Movements, a social justice school for activists. All of her work aims to nourish the sacred and make it plain in every day life.
