originally written & published June 2024; revised June 2025

i am on my hands and knees
a belly full of baby,

and so happy,

in our backyard

in June

i am pushing the wrong variety of snapdragons into the soil of the new-to-me flowerbeds — in all my young, botanical ignorance,
on this 3rd day, your ‘due’ date,

they call on a landline
to say to me, “your dead, first father’s second wife is now also dead
… and there is a little money from his railroad retirement pension to be disbursed to you, his only child, a daughter”

the timing feels supernatural.

like a gift, from him — ten years, plus one day, after his death on June 2, 1984 — on your “due” date.

a gift.

we are living friday to friday after just barely mortgaging a little worker’s cottage on Grace Street in Six Corners-Portage Park, nine months ago.

on this 3rd day, your ‘due’ date,
in Streeterville, they say to me, “you’re not even effaced,
let alone opening: go home — but come back soon.”

ultimately, we, me and you, go back in exactly 13 days.
the timing is inconveniently perfect:

The World Cup, biblical Chicago heat and humidity, and the hypnotic O.J. Simpson circus
are not my and your fault;

your father and i bring you home on a sweltering Father’s Day.

you, are now, undeniably a Chicago summer baby and i, was always meant to be your Chicago summer mother.

//

i think about that word — “dilated” retroactively:
how my womb would open and become your light-filled
tunnel, one way — or another

i often joke, but am wholly serious
when i say,
when i die,
i will not head toward any tunnel of light
to [re]incarnate into a newborn Earthling of any stripe or species /
that is, without a contract, written on a stone
monolith in symbols — as i am confident they will still be disunderstanding, corrupting and destroying the words and language of goddesses, grandmothers, mothers and children, eternally here

//

who is the one Earthling on Earth no other Earthling covets, hunts or kills?
i am at a loss.
even hummingbirds become men’s chuparosas; even hummingbirds are also territorial greedy bullies.

how about

a monarch butterfly, then? no, they let school children confine and hatch those alchemical chrysalises in classrooms as observational science.

no being — whether of land, sky or sea
is spared from the desirous senses and cravings of another being

do you remember learning about
the food chain in elementary school?
about the producers and consumers?
man — and his machines and technology
as the apex predator on top of the food pyramid —
that circle of life — from freshman biology or The Lion King?

they’re describing samsara;
they’re describing the ouroboros.

in the Tibetan Book Of The Dead,
the Bardo Thodol
the dying one, then dead one, still able to hear,

is instructed to not go into the field of
White light of the Gods

those with ears to hear — you better listen!

i will not go there — or,
into the light of the womb that glows with the Sun reflecting the Seas of Earthbound rebirth — that tunnel that leads to the field of Blue light

what i am saying, my son, is:
i am sorry i was a vehicle, a medium, a pawn
in capturing your spirit — but not for catching you, for birthing you, mothering you and loving you as the flawed human vessel that i am

i will tell you these truths til the day i stop talking.

although i know you will continue to scoff at me,
i will continue to remind you about the visitation of our first dog and our second dog
in your prophetic Oklahoma dream in a dormitory so far away in the Wyoming mountains — that one summer

and when i am dying, if you are with me, my son, and i hope you are,
will you please say to me,

and repeat again and again to me:

go into the darkness, momma,
go into the beautiful black void,
remember, and don’t be afraid, now, momma,
there is no need to fear
there is only Perfect Nothingness,
there is only Perfect Silence,

pass through and beyond the Liminal, momma
into pure consciousness

//

and please remind me of my vow:

i will never consent to know this place again

unless you alone beckon me,

my June, and always,
Sonlight.

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