one long umbilical breath

i took one long umbilical breath and threaded the needle black thread sung through needle head like cat's lip. i never though the first morning one of my cylndrical scalp fingers would kiss her sisters and brothers and sisters goodbye and slip away like emancipated DNA a cardinal would fly back from the edge of florida and oracle the next ten months. i never thought a shower loosening effect would work a pores voodoo and lasso a surprise twinge at the nape of the neck loose hairs on fingers and a half smile half cry whirling exhale. like any undernurtured mother i wanted to hold closes and closer.

my mother would squeeze my nostrils shut and tell me to blow, girl blow. instinctively i would blow out my mouth and she should shred my ear drums. no girl out of your nose. couldn't couldn't could not just could not! but mucus lined nostrils remind me of the unhealth closeness i felt to this splinter of hair that decided to take an amistad leap.

so as water rushed from the peppermint crevices i took a lethargic sprint around the apartment leaving peppermint suds and microscopic shards of black thread in each room.

one long umbilical breath.

and perched before a sheer canary curtain and a cardinal slipping a note under my screened bathroom window i licked a thin piece of black thread and tried to reattach baby girl hair to the nape of my neck. i counted my belly eggs to see if she would fit gulped incensed air and blinked 1,2,3 and pushed the teeny twirl of black thread through the needle head, through the needle head to bring baby girl hair back to me.

the cardinal knows a bles and whitles desyncopated grunts through perched beak, i don't know if that cardinal ever left for orlandos balmy bosooms or if her nestled in the leaves composting inthe back yard and waited for a perrermint morning to spring and she would come to me tell me how it is time to coount by bell eggs and say farewell to one caritin offspring, even just one even for a moment.

a drop of shower fell right out of my eye corner and shimmied down a centimeter of thread and right onto the needle eye. solid. and i took one umbilical breath and watched the postmas gazing through canary curtain watching peppermint suds slide down unclothed backside and wondered if the cardinal was done with the bathroom message.