Mother of the Blues

The first time I felt it, I knew it was old as ancestry:
the feeling some women chase with words; some feel
out the flesh of their mouths or stomach with moans
and growls you would’ve thought was warfare. The child  
conceived of heartache, our evidence of loving.

I was with child before I ever lay with a man—an ill-mannered
girl who made a language of feeling. She rattled my insides,
making songs of heartache and lonely. I carried her for years—  
thought I got rid of her with words fishing round like a hook.  
She only grew heavy as any baby fat with emotion, the weight

I carry like any mother, like any woman who has mothered
herself while a child clawed out her throat. A boy left me  
by the side of the road, heart in hand like a beggar. I hadn’t
known I was with child until she came naked on my tongue,
a cry so much my own and so separate from my body.  

Words crashed through my mouth like I was a master rapper,  
cursing him and his mothers and his house and his good-for-nothing-aaahhh.
She kicked and burped and gassed like any almost-baby, ready  
to taste air for herself. Mad as Mary, as any woman who saw God  
and left, mouth filled with babble, I pushed out the wail  

like a kegel, and the child came, blue. No breath. I pushed my air  
out, and filled the hollow where her mouth should’ve been.
People saw me wail and writhe, until I laughed, in awe. I heard  
the echo of ages in her single song, and witnessed her feel  
her own self out. How good it felt to raise her from my tongue.  

She threw her whole-bodied voice about me like a whistle.  
Passersby heard her, too, but to them, I was a foolish girl
with no manners, hollering and calling it singsong: a godless prayer.
I held her as long as I could, calling on her again and again, willing  
her to life: mama’s healing baby.

She took all my hurt and made it dance before me.  
Her cry, my own. I gave birth to sound I ain’t never heard  
before, and she was soft as woman parts and hard as loving.  
I kept willing my breath and heart to hear her, mama’s tender  
baby, a child of myself.