portals

one morning I escape from my mother’s body – swiftly, through the narrow openings of my skull where there’s a parting of bones

there is an opening here, I feel it with the red tip of my tongue; it sinks into the bloodied space of the gum, two teeth missing.

in my palm, here they are, two perfect white teeth
immaculately shaped with textbook precision
moon-white, hard as bone
the baby tooth attached to the mother tooth, like adrenals clinging to the kidney craving vitality
or like an infant clinging to the mother’s breast sucking white fatty nourishment.

this space left drowns me in shame and inadequacy

I remember
I am the ugly child
mouth-crooked and unstable
dark as my birth, unconscious mother, white sterile walls beds hands;
an infant attached to feeding tubes,
insatiable as the hungry ghosts of my grandfathers
who fed the mouths of beggars, yet starved their own.

my belly is round with grieving, pregnant with dreams of full emergence
soon.

a daily practice to learn how to be Here –
rooted safety within the dark uncertainties of a mad world
a gradual opening of body to truth
of heart to light
of womb to the waters of love
finding home within homelessness.

make two wishes to the soul-dream of your white-boned teeth

to escape the cage
to fly and for once, not to fall