Expanded, Assaulted and Blessed

by Lily Peachey

You come, small,
But mighty,
With your host of new hormones
That bend my body and
Bend my mind
With waves of nausea.

I feel these days only assaulted
This long hot July
Of your newfound existence
That is, your hijack of my agency
And your occupancy of our body
Of my body

I am your willing and tortured womb.
Be gracious to me, my dear.

And then you are; gracious.
I puke less, and reflect
Move to a new town
And find that I’m blessed
And beginning to wax expanded.

I dream in the night of your birth
And your face.
For the first in my life I want to be fat
Just for some sign of your abiding and thriving
In our more gracious cohabitation.

The Lord leads
And sometimes the waters are wild
But still, he teaches
When all has gone weak
In this painful reception of blessing

It is he who has made us
And not we ourselves
But all we like sheep have gone astray
From our creatureliness
Thinking life a gift given into our ownership

Now in your advent, dear one,
He pulls the string taught
On my wandering circuits
Until this thrashing soul
Becomes still water of trust and dependence
On the one who owns all of this
bloody skinful goodness.

Thanks be to God.

Lily lives in a small brick house with Josiah, a poet seminarian to whom she is wed, and a small, unseen, child who is advancing towards independent breath and the sanctification of sleepless nights on behalf of the poets.

Artwork: The Red Kerchief, Claude Monet, c. 1870