Poem: "Baby Gifts"
Baby Gifts This is your tumpline to help you with your burden when you gather kindling —Rosa Xulemhó, “A Midwife Addresses the Newborn” Some fairy godmother or furious hag, I don’t know which, closed in my baby hands a slice of glass, a wind puffed in a bag, and curly thread, crimson, snipped at both ends. That’s why I have grown tall and self-regarding peering into cracked mirrors, on my toes. That’s why I find a cozy home retarding when the east wind, the naughty east wind, blows. And when my blood has stopped its pleasant twitch and suffers the deep pangs of love at last, why I don’t know if I’d return the witch the convoluted bondage of the past.