Unknown Girl in the Maternity Ward

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Child, the current of your breath is six days long. 
You lie, a small knuckle on my white bed; 
lie, fisted like a snail, so small and strong
at my breast. Your lips are animals; you are fed 
with love. At first hunger is not wrong.
The nurses nod their caps; you are shepherded 
down starch halls with the other unnested throng 
in wheeling baskets. You tip like a cup; your head 
moving to my touch. You sense the way we belong. 
But this is an institution bed.
You will not know me very long.

The doctors are enamel. They want to know
the facts. They guess about the man who left me, 
some pendulum soul, going the way men go 
and leave you full of child. But our case history 
stays blank. All I did was let you grow. 
Now we are here for all the ward to see. 
They thought I was strange, although 
I never spoke a word. I burst empty 
of you, letting you learn how the air is so. 
The doctors chart the riddle they ask of me 
and I turn my head away. I do not know.

Yours is the only face I recognize.
Bone at my bone, you drink my answers in. 
Six times a day I prize
your need, the animals of your lips, your skin 
growing warm and plump. I see your eyes
lifting their tents. They are blue stones, they begin 
to outgrow their moss. You blink in surprise
and I wonder what you can see, my funny kin, 
as you trouble my silence. I am a shelter of lies. 
Should I learn to speak again, or hopeless in 
such sanity will I touch some face I recognize?

Down the hall the baskets start back. My arms 
fit you like a sleeve, they hold
catkins of your willows, the wild bee farms 
of your nerves, each muscle and fold
of your first days. Your old man’s face disarms 
the nurses. But the doctors return to scold 
me. I speak. It is you my silence harms. 
I should have known; I should have told
them something to write down. My voice alarms 
my throat. “Name of father—none.” I hold 
you and name you bastard in my arms.

And now that’s that. There is nothing more 
that I can say or lose.
Others have traded life before
and could not speak. I tighten to refuse 
your owling eyes, my fragile visitor.
I touch your cheeks, like flowers. You bruise 
against me. We unlearn. I am a shore 
rocking you off. You break from me. I choose 
your only way, my small inheritor
and hand you off, trembling the selves we lose. 
Go child, who is my sin and nothing more.

© Anne Sexton