Death Was My Doula
My driver’s license came in an envelope
stuffed with lilies, stinking and grey, dulling
the blue irises of my glassy image black. On
my high school diploma, they stitched my name
with thread stolen from the eyelids of the dead,
and when I walked across the stage to take my college
degree, my ghosts howled and cheered and shed tears
dropped in the shape of gold coins. The priest at my wedding
crossed our marriage and last rites in a two-for-one special
with a wink and promise to see our favorite guests again
before the year was out. As my body broke from birthing,
death was my doula, wiping cold sweat from my brow, laying
her icy hands across my belly, bearing my crushing grip
with a grin. She held each babe, still swaddled in my blood,
and pressed her lipless mouth against their downy crowns,
marked each tiny hand with the stain of a single pomegranate
seed. Half she took with her before they drew their first breath,
leaving the other half in my care for just a little while, knowing
it wouldn’t be long before they, too, would be borne again
by her hand. Now I place a narcissus with each certificate
marking their passing inside a gold-lined envelope and seal
them shut with a lavender string tugged free from the edge
of a rainbow. I turn to watch the raven spread her inky wings
across the sun. From the corner of my eye, a butterfly alights
on the branch of the decaying cypress tree, and every clock
in every village echoes the rising call of night.