Someone once said we were put on this earth to witness and testify
BY QUAN BARRY
Nowhere in the Halakha’s five thousand years of rules
does it specifically state Thou shall not [ ]
but sometimes tradition carries more weight than law
and so for much of the past year we have not talked
about what will happen on Thursday, how the cervix
will start its slow yawn, the pelvic floor straining
as the head crowns, the fontanelles allowing
the bony panes of the skull to pass through
until, over the next 24 months, the five cranial plates
gradually ossify, the head forming its own helmet
as structures harden over the soft meats of the brain,
nor do we talk about the colostrum sunny as egg yolks
now collecting in your breasts, the thing’s first nutrients
already ready and waiting, the event just days away
and still we do not talk about it, the mass growing inside you
tucked up safe in the leeward side under the heart
because sometimes our god is a jealous god, the evil eye
lidless and all-seeing. Instead we will wait until it is done,
until the creature has been cleaned and wrapped in soft cloth,
the bloody cord that binds you severed. And maybe
you will name it Dolores, which means grief,
or perhaps you will call it Mara, the Hebrew name for bitterness
because this is how we protect what we love,
by hiding what it truly means to us, the little bag of gold
we keep buried in the yard, the thing we will do anything
to keep safe, even going so far as to pretend
it doesn’t exist, that there’s nothing massing in the dark
despite the steady light emanating from your face, a radiance
so bright sometimes I can’t look at you, the joy so overpowering
you want to shout it from the highest mountaintop
straight into God’s ear.
Reflective writing prompt:
Shout about an overpowering joy
or
Protecting what we love