Motherhood (Borderline)

'I mean to live'  
    
     - Ai Ogawa  
 
 
Under a burning sun  
hot as the sand we walk on;  
his doe-eyes red,  
dry lips thirsty,
we escaped. I knew it  
had to be, and his father:  
I sliced him down the middle  
before we left -- a perfect parting  
of his powder-white innards  
slipping from their secret bag  
and scattering where I left him.  
Now we walk the low terrain  
instead of running  
along a high mountaintop ridge,  
looking down.  
 
He looks down at us now,  
blue nascent ruler  
whose bags I carry,  
filling me inside.  I know  
he can always see me --  
a vulture can fly anywhere.  
The metal edge dividing us  
won't cut through his scales  
where he reaches across  
my borders superseding all  
confining limits.  
My eyes close.  
I see the razors on round wires:  
the new god cutting into my arms  
in long slashes; A prayer.  
Its better this way, I think, the boy  
will be rescued --  
I am a stone around his neck  
I am his thirst.  
His oasis is beyond the snake trails  
where snakes emerge.  
 
I dreamed of an elaborate  
mansion made of the hills,  
many peopled,  
adorned in all the colors  
our natural dyes could create:  
fringy caftans flowed around  
smiling mothers;  
hair in braids, eyes squinting at me --  
who is she, one of us?  
She must die with us to be made  
tribeswoman. She must run  
through our rocks as rivers  
pouring red courage.  
It was a mirage.  
 
I hear a snake rustling --  
he flits and hisses, or is it she;  
it burrows, tunneling for cover.  
We don't get a tunnel, we get  
hunger; we are empty even when full  
as a snake after it swallows  
a meal.  White hunger.  
Unable to be found.  
In the dark I found out why:  
I want to live, but can't.  
 
      .....