Caesura

Sophia Lee

It was a fat pause.  A pregnant one — we all heard
it.  Saw the caesura hanging there in the air,
a gaping emptiness she must have felt
as ice.  Its eyes, wide open,
stared between the maws
of my mother's open belly.

Later that night I ran
into the woods, where a pond lies
waiting for little girls to steal fish,
where I waited — standing still
and pruned as the new dead newborn
cut untimely, cut precisely
from my mother's womb — for the fish.

Like a kitten, it rubbed its sides against my ankles,
scales scraping skin, and I looked down
to wait for the moment I would close
my ankles shut, quick,
(but gentle,)
so that I would not harm the creature.

When I felt it twist between my hands,
I imagined I held him in my arms,
but out of the pail
                                    it slipped
into the paleness of my bathtub.

I poke it with a pole,
as its sleek body slides
through water thick with cold.
Gold fringe of fin and tail,
He bursts a brilliant red.