Still Life With Womb and Nine Imagined Siblings by Natalia Conte

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She is still teaching me all the ways I can bleed. 

Black ice near invisible on the asphalt. Shattered

bottles trashed near the freeway. My body 

welts quicker than a pear. Her body bore 

nine almost babies. Nine near lives lost

in clots of blood at the bottom of a porcelain bowl. 

She still cups my cheeks like she sees their eyes 

in my eyes. My eyes as windows, as apparitions, 

as everything she almost— My mother bled 

for love of me. Needle pressed to thigh, that soft 

patch of belly. All those nights with the duvet wrapped 

around empty, wanting that soft tick of another 

heartbeat. Some mornings, she holds me to the light 

to see if I am still real. 

To see if I am still real, I betray all my own 

secrets. Check my body in the mirror for signs 

of permanence. My breath barely ghosting the glass. My bones: 

a museum of playground injuries, problems that breed 

more problems. Hips that hold food trays at different heights. 

The bald head of an extra bone poking through when 

I knick my leg shaving. A calcium pearl fixed to my kidney,

folding me into a cursive L. I betray myself again, 

trying to make these pains pretty. There’s no poetry

in the screws they used to push me upright. 

The locker room girls with their crinkled noses 

squirming at the sight of sutured flesh. Each day, 

I stitch myself up again, a leather bound girl. 

Each day, my body births a new unknown. 

Each day, my body births a new unknown. When I watch

babies batter their mothers in Sunday mass, I wonder

if I would choose that life. New teeth gnawing on bra straps,

shoulder bones, anything exposed. The way they throw fists, 

land roundhouse kicks to the belly, forget their old homes

so easily. What did she feel when she held me 

to her chest?  I’ve been starving the call 

of biology for years. It cries loudest at night, begs

for knee bounces, warmed bottles, anything to calm, anything

to carry. I don’t know if I am a mirror of my mother,

one fallopian tube in rebellion, the other moving double-time. 

It’s better to convince myself to not want what I may 

never have.  Play the auntie, the one who didn’t—

I love each baby I’ve never held. 

I love each baby I’ve never held. She loved each baby 

she never had. At night, she’d let her hair 

spill through the rungs of my crib. Light played 

tricks on the eye, moon cycles on her collarbones. 

Wooden dowels carved a face in the horizontal 

shadows. The body as prison. Her forehead skin knit 

into the shape of a held hand. The body as new terrain. 

Her ears still perk up at the first sign of danger. She hears 

nine knocks on the bedroom door that are not there, 

meets each almost death ten miles in advance. Still rings me 

on the ninth day, the ninth week, the ninth month just to hear 

my breathing. Her worry as dissonance. Her worry as off-kilter 

lullaby. It isn’t loneliness that drives these thoughts. Her body knows 

too many ghosts to ever feel alone. 

Too many ghosts to ever feel alone, I imagine 

each almost baby in a silent ballet. Pointed toes, solemn 

faces, umbilical cords. A flush of taffeta, nip of amnion. 

We’re almost amphibious, you know. Synchronized 

swimmers sensing light and dark and heat and sound.

In the background plays a five string quartet of fear. 

I carry them with me everywhere, my frenzied hands 

feeding pain through any vessel that might try to hold it. 

Nothing can truly hold it. I keep sieving anyway, small hurt 

by small hurt, train my brain to take on different shapes. A girl 

not haunted. A girl who does not do a damn thing wrong. 

It’s all duty. My daily devotions. My body as malleable as 

bone marrow. My mother prays for my soul, my sanity, my sanctity. 

A body, at risk. Her body, forever shielding mine.  

A body at risk. My body forever shielding hers. 

Oh saint of yellow bruises, broken heels! Of collarbones

that shatter like wine bottles into hundreds of little wrecks. 

 Periscopes that probe to see and never solve. God of the machine,

the MRI, the tool that pokes at polyps. Her body grows

sour fruit easy as a lemon tree. The bible of the body knows 

we’re all too brittle, bones just shards before they’ve broken. 

Her body grows benign tumors easier than I grow worry, thick

in the mind, stuck to everything. It’s all waiting, after all.  

My love says I fear ten years too soon, have a habit 

of making each moment bound to meaning. Sure, I make 

all simple things sacred. Canonize each sacrifice she’s made 

for me into an act of divinity. Her body knew no certainty. 

Loved a thing before it existed. 

To love a thing as it exists, I count all ten of my toes. Feel 

for each familiar callous, the jut of mislaid bone. My mother 

calls them flawless canvases, coats each in pre-natal pink.

My body as basis for creation. Her fingers surgeon steady. When 

she shattered her heel, I cradled it like a sugared plum to my chest

both palms cupped. We are both bad at receiving. The electrodes 

left her sparking with pain, bone-on-bone. Fragments of body, 

fused. Before my procedure, she loomed by my surgeon’s 

side. I saved my last five seconds of consciousness: know 

her oval face as well as my own, each fear slicked back 

into a tight smile. The crosshatch between her eyebrows 

still seems to whisper: we are both made from breakable things. 

Each day, I want to whisper back, see all the ways 

we can bleed and still remain whole? 

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Natalia Conte is a poet and educator from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. She is a recent graduate of the MFA program at NC State University and her work can be found in The Greensboro Review, SWWIM Everyday, and The Pedestal among others. She currently lives and writes in New York City with her tiny black cat Zen. You can find more of her work at nataliaconte.com. 

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16 May 2022