Adamantine

Adamantine

I am a mother,
but I do not know it yet. 
Every night I am aborting reveries 
that just didn’t quite die. 

Things are constant in me.
Stalks plume and cramp,
stuffed infants, pushing 
against all my edges, thinning.

Translucency is incidental to all this.
Veins blossom like roots, every nick
shows; what I carry, sloshes,
as though about to spill. 

Leaks spring,
when I go to move things
or put my back into it.
Squeeze me, I’m silent til the pop.

Pluck a hair from me
I’ll hemorrhage. I am anemic in my 
embrace. Meager and feeble 
as a dried rose. 

But I can’t die.
I’ve tried. Through countless 
items I have collected a trunk
of suicides unfinished.

Dreaming once, I saw a church,
that didn’t hurt when I kneeled
down. Before the cleanse
was cast, I woke.

Every night I attempt
to go back. So I may finish what began.
Never do I make it there.
I fall into the holy font. I drown.   

It’s painful. I don’t die.

“Adamantine” was first published in The Stray Branch November 2017. This is its first time appearing on this blog or anywhere else.