The Mother Of
Morgan Ziegenhorn
Somewhere inside me lives
the desire to bear you
out into the world on
wrinkled hands.
I think
I deserve to
revel in the brutality
of it. To dig in and wallow
and swell
and burst. To be
the voice
that vibrates in
your body, that sings to hush
the fussy cries you’ll make
when you realize
you are no longer safe
inside of me. And bloody.
My lips will shape
silent prayers
and I will weep
to be rid of your weight
in my stomach—now pressed
on my chest. I will be
like mother of pearl found
on the beach—split open, but
more beautiful
than before.
Morgan Ziegenhorn is a graduate of the University of California, Berkeley with a degree in biology and minor in creative writing. Her work has previously appeared in the Cal Literature and Arts Magazine (CLAM) at UC Berkeley. She is a graduate student at Scripps Institution of Oceanography in La Jolla, California studying the vocal repertoires (and she would say, the underlying poetry) of marine mammals in the sea. She is from Sacramento, California.