To Reach That Dark Grief

Geula Geurts

That first shower after birth, the nurse on her knees
sliding down the pale mesh underwear, my husband

steadying me with both arms, the clots of blood dropping
like black jellyfish to the white tiles, legs still asleep

from anesthesia, I thought about my mother.

How, when I was fourteen, she slept on a mattress in the living
room. How she no longer could walk up the stairs.

How I’d clean her vomit before leaving for school in the morning,
the grey carpet reeking of vinegar, my mother’s face

ashen like the floor she lay on. By the time they found
the coal-colored tumor, she’d wet herself and slipped into

the prelude, an operating room so illuminated
it tolled with metallic song. They broke two ribs and removed her bowels

to reach that dark grief. The size of a tennis ball, they said later.

Now, I think back to that shower and imagine my womb
casting out all the blackness she’d held for so long.

I think of my refusal to visit her after surgery, her scarred voice
on the other end of the line, the phone

pressing furrows into my ear so I could hear
her thin gargle of offerings.

Little did I know that she’d returned from the dead for me.

Now, I’ve found a small chamber, a hollow cut
out of flesh where my mother and I fill

each other’s shadow, the same theater of light.
Here I remember that phone call.

She said, Geula, How are you?
And I said, Mama, I’m fine.

Geula Geurts is a Dutch born poet and essayist living in Jerusalem. A 2021 Best of the Net nominee, her work has recently appeared or is forthcoming in Guesthouse, Spoon River, Indianapolis Review, Pleiades, Salamander, and EcoTheo. Her lyric essay 'The Beginnings of Fire' was published by CutBank Books (Summer 2021). Her manuscript 'Tiny Bones Glowing' was selected as a finalist in the 2021 Brittingham and Felix Pollak Poetry Prizes from Wisconsin Poetry Series and was the first runner-up in the 2020 Red Hen Press Benjamin Saltman Award. Her mini chapbook 'Like Any Good Daughter' was published by Platypus Press. She is a graduate of the Shaindy Rudoff Graduate Program in Creative Writing at Bar Ilan University, and works as a literary agent at the Deborah Harris Agency.