by ALYSSA JOY
Just as the crocuses began their annual birthing
I went into the dark. While I was sleeping
physicians cut out of me the only part
that was always waiting to be a mother
and left behind the thick tissue of loss.
What I carry now,
instead of children never conceived,
I have always carried.
At night as I am falling to sleep,
all the women and girls I have been
unpack themselves—
automaton matryoshka dolls
twist rounded shoulders above unlikely skirts.
Their tiniest faces are exquisitely detailed.
Outermost—I am growing rounder by the year.
My features blur with each orbit, ‘til my body
achieves the exact circumference
that will hold snug and safe every smaller self.
My healing mirrors their survival. The smallest shapes
china-doll-fragile and delicate. Me but not me,
what I once was, small—big, bright—dark,
held within the only woman I could be.
–
Alyssa Joy (she/her) is a writer living with chronic illness outside of Saint Paul, Minnesota. She is a reader of poetry, space opera, magical realism, cozy-romantic-horror, housekeeping manuals, cookbooks, memoirs of women living with mysterious illness, and tarot cards. She has previously been published in Coeval Literary Journal.
© Alyssa Joy
Halfway Down the Stairs 