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Witness to the Work
If I could knock a house down with my crotch or pull a train cross-country with a little string tied to my cock well then that would be something. Not much, but at least something.
If I could breathe in sharply now and swallow the western half of Portugal with its bright umbrellas and pointy cathedrals and its statues of Fernando Pessoa it might be the same.
If I could just think of the pain I would fall over like a lettuce, as it is, a great and growing awe comes between us now and we do not speak of it. Months pass. More months.
She cries out suddenly and her cries are deep like nothing I’ve ever heard and the car zigzags and we are there. Then the hours pass filled with a difficult kind of grace.
And she pushes that baby out of her and the baby finally says OK and galumph, just like that, this lump of breath falls into the world and is lifted to her mother’s breast.
And she is crying and people are nipping and cutting, saying Oh isn’t she, isn’t she and the room is spinning hard and this spinning spins the earth and the earth spins faster.
And I always thought that life was like a blue donkey named Disaster that we ride to death and whisper to. Now I know. It’s this bloody holy work the mothers do.
Steve Scafidi
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:hi:
RL
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