Delivery

From the fear of being forgotten, deliver me.

That I may have courage, grant me the grace to desire it. 

A young woman lies on the trolley, 

feet strapped in lithotomy position.

I smile at her. Her eyes are two locked green doors —

she has shut herself out and is standing behind me. 

An angel-scavenger lies at her breast, suckles

on our history of silence, we have taught it to do this, 

and whenever we wind it, it spits up catechism. 

Drapes are assembled. 

Master and Matron decide this woman,

raped into motherhood, shall not know her child.

A boy. He is swaddled and taken away. 

And the room is filled with pounding 

against two locked green doors. 

Later, she stands on tip-toe, 

attempts to see

through the frosted glass of the nursery.