Mine was a live birth. I slipped sloppily into the doctor’s hands,
my mother medicated; my father elsewhere.
Startled at something mid-canal, I gasped and gulped
amniotic fluid—my first days spent in an isolette.
Maybe I cracked under the pressure of the uterine wall, but
my path and genetics were set. The color of my hair, the tilt of my head,
a rolodex of maladies. All of these blood-borne tendencies
inspired in the original breach.
Better to be lain in an egg. Incubated alone
until viable and then, short of space, I could
peck until I forced a crack, and then stretch
full-height, bursting the wall,
like Venus—the
spent shell
falling
all around me.