Slippery

The sculptor’s homeland abandoned—
long before I was poured into
this geography of pain.
In the oily lattice of a womb
where the umbilical flower
is clipped like scrap metal,
a flesh-chisel jerks awake—
fatherhood delayed
along the slippery corridor
of uterine clay.
Birth rings out:
its cry fused with the sculptor’s hammer,
a deep genital resonance—
indistinguishable.
Life swirls across slippery floors of space,
renouncing nations,
renouncing inheritance.
I tried to walk the gentler avenue—
the avenue of pleasure,
but its soft exhibition
never revealed itself.
So I waited,
like a penniless bird,
beak sharp against emptiness.
One day the passage of birth
will close—
and in hunger for another orbit
I will carve new sorrow
into the soft mud of earth.
Here I remain,
eyes pressed to the uterus,
guarding the embryo of tomorrow—
as though the sculptor’s hand
still shapes me
from the residue of
his own disappearance.