FERTILE LAND

By Anaiah Hervey

She made herself precious and soft for him

on her first night of a quivering marriage

She bit at the drool covered pillow as he entered her

red faced and rigid, eyes squeezed shut

as her mother stood beyond the door,

called to by her purple cries’ echo.

Hushed wood beneath her fingertips ran along

the grains of her mind where she rocked for hours

with that creaky face and baby red floor board.

After hours, days even, beyond the door

lays inside out, quiet still in unfamiliar arms

in comfort worth a bargain of a dowry.

In the morning she’ll have felt accomplished;

almost complete, almost a woman, but fully

human, like the very one she’d idolized,

but less than the joys she could afford

if she‘d not withhold the son he is owed.

A dream so childlike, at its most pure,

from her dolls, to her school books,

grandpa's sunday dinners,

to the tall mirror in the bathroom:

the purpose of fertile land is to produce

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