She could already feel her in her womb, the child, the baby that was to become somebody in her life, she could feel the ache, of her pride, as she rose up and dreamed that she was having a baby, a child that would be hers. The child she had dreamed of, that was deep inside her womb, just a seed now from a man, but germinating, a seed of nature. She was a garden. Her body was a garden. And she felt the seed grow, into a plant into a tree, into a flower, and the flower was hers, her love, her baby, her child. It was only a flower, but it was her baby.

It was the flower that came to her, the flower that came to her body, as froth on the ocean waves on the sea. And her body was a sea, her body was the ocean: the ocean spewing up shells, quahogs and oysters and scallops, and she was Aphrodite riding on a scallop shell. As her womb expanded with her woman’s power, she wept, and she laughed, and she cried. She writhed with the anger she felt at the suppression of her body , all her body couldn’t feel when it was shut in, with no light, and she was entrapped as a bee in a mason jar, in a dark basement, her body tight with a memory of a healing heart and mind. But she had healed, and she was growing like the flower that she would hold in her hands.

The baby came, the flower came. The baby laughed and smiled. Her speech was her laughter, the language of a child. And the she spoke with her laughter, and the mother understood. And her heart bloomed because it was a flower. Its white petals were soft and fragrant. Her body closed at night, and it opened in the morning, and the baby’s eyes and were there to greet her when she saw her. The baby was a sparkling gem, with many facets of infinite joy.

The baby nursed, under the cups of her bra. She never felt so wonderful naked. She could hear the baby’s speech, this speech of that came from a baby’s mouth. Just humming and cooing and gargling but it had the measure lyric poetry. And the baby’s mind was poetry to her, this little mind, as the hum of bees out of their hive: and the baby’s breath smelled like honey – honey gathered from her own breasts, from her own body, from her own womb. For she was a flower, her body had made her a flower.

She spoke to the baby at night, as the baby slept. The baby slept with such peace as she could never imagine she would ever have. But she had it as she watched the baby sleep.  She watched her sleep, the soft eyelids shut over her cloudy eyes, big, tiny blue things, agate shooting marbles in space; and the baby dreamed, and the mother knew her dreams, she knew them deep in her soft, listening heart. She had known the dreams from the beginning. For they were her dreams of having a baby, the baby born from the flower inside her heart, a baby to love in her arms, which she was holding right now.