Birth Plan
The onion with the gold skin beside me.
The gold-skinned onion with the maroon rope.
The onion beside me: gold-skinned, tied at its sprouting point
with a blur of maroon yarn.
Gold-skinned. Not like me. Sprouting green.
At the sprouting point a knot of maroon yarn.
Dark maroon like dried blood.
The green keeps growing beside me, I can’t tell but look at them now.
Pointing at me. One two three four five six seven eight nine ten eleven twelve thirteen green.
The yarn is merging with the onion, woven into the thirteen sprouting points.
The yarn curls into itself like an onion.
I think that after the baby is born I am supposed to bury the onion
with the yarn still on – a storm of yarn, a haze of blood, thick and soft.
I want to make a small blanket out of the yarn underground
after the cats have licked the baby clean.
I think I am supposed to go into the snow with a shovel and dig through the dirt,
make an ugly patch of labor, and bury the gold onion. Save the placenta for spring.
We are red and the baby is blue and our hands are raw.
The yarn I must look at but should not touch, it squeaks polyester in my hand.
The onion I can look at but not smell. Green sprouting in winter. A blue baby cries.
Growing beside me and inside me in spite of the cold. Growing on chocolate and snow.
A nipple at the bottom of the onion. Scraggly hay.
Lines like road maps, like arteries on the skin.
Paper skin. Baby skin while I labor.
Fur yarn unknown to my adult self. Childhood yarn.
Maroon, dried blood in the shadows, fuchsia at the furriest light.
A maroon spot on the golden onion that no one but itself made.
Paper skin pink where it peels. I would like to labor beside this onion
and give birth to the parts that are green, peeling a baby out of a placenta part by part,
dark yarn attaching us. We are buried nearly all year so that we survive.
