Before You Were Born - D. Marie Fitzgerald

Content Note: Domestic Violence

In this way I spoke to you

holding long conversations,

my arms caressing my basketball sized stomach

as I told you everything I was doing every day.

You were for that interval detained, 

floating dreamlike within your aquarium globe.

I would speak to you whenever the outside volume

became too distracting--

when the threat of impending violence tensed the surrounding air.

He would be ranting about something,

and so, I would sit on the edge of the bed

and sing to you,

“Don’t you listen to him; mommy loves you”--

 my arms around the you inside of me-- 

placing my palms just where I thought your budding ears might be,

to keep you, I hoped, from hearing his voice.

Once, before you were born,

I ran from him down the street,

and again, my arms desperately held you.

This time they formed a kind of lift, a restraint,

against the jostling of juices

as I held my bountiful belly

like a young boy who has just kidnapped

a prized ripe watermelon from the neighbor’s yard.

Before you were born,

as your first endocrinological seas were forming,

establishing their recipe transmuted from his ocean

and mine, 

I did not know then you would memorize those voices,

that you would carry them with you,

an imprint left

before you were born.

This poem has previously appeared in The Pen Woman Magazine (2015) and in two of the author’s books. Reruns was published in 2013 by Dog Ear Press. The poem subsequently appeared in I Have Pictured Myself for Years, published by One Spirit Press in 2021

D. Marie Fitzgerald is the author of Reruns, A Perfect World, F&G, I Have Pictured Myself for Years, and The Love Song. Her work has appeared in numerous publications, most recently Down in the Dirt, The Piker Press, and Academy of the Heart and Mind. She hosts a monthly authors series in Palm Springs, California as well as leading a poetry group. She is a retired English and creative writing instructor. She lives in Palm Springs, California with her significant other of twenty-seven years.