After Children by Cristina Medina

After Children

Looking down at her,

           dusk lace on one cream leg

a delicate form cast onto the white bed.

She looks like miles of divinity,

           her black hair splashing

along the nebula.

You want to hold her in this image,

          against the sky

over far water where the orchestrated

sun creates an inversion between sea

           and cloud, 

one crepuscular ray appears like a ladder 

of reverie; the tragedy of perspective

           is realizing

she is parallel, as she has always been.

The milk erupts from her, white water

            spilling over,

and she is embarrassed to let you

see her naked this way. When she gets

           up in the light,

a sheet clutched to her chest,

you imagine the edge of heaven

          where the whales die.

You cannot stop her from leaving

any more than you could fall from

          the sky and land

on the only spot in the ocean

illuminated by a lie.

Cristina Medina writes and teaches in Los Angeles. She is a graduate of Antioch University Los Angeles MFA program. Her poems and essays have appeared in North American Review, Lunch Ticket, Pidgeonholes, Angel City Review, and elsewhere.