Unexpected

They wheeled my mother

to the table under the lights,

sliced her open only to find

in her womb,

a furled girl

the size of a damson

plum, translucent eyelids

too fragile to block

the blinding white.

The doctors pinched

my mother’s flaps of skin

together, stitched a hasty row

of x’s, washed their hands

of it all, left

me to swirl

in the murky sac,

heartbeat as faint

as a foxglove’s bell.