Portrait of a Mother in the Garden, Weeding

by Rowan Tate

The sun is in my mouth, God ripens

in me, he says these are your hands

and the Sonata in C sharp minor, the kneading

of sweet-herb bread, untangling

necklaces, playing a laughing bagatelle, playing

the world to its end against a bird-freckled sky.

Two of them in the garden like Adam and Eve,

an accident of joy, but God knows how

my body still remembers the ripping.

How to endure it, the place in me that opens

like the glove pocket of a car, all the bodies they will ever have

are in me now, pink nubs being sown like cushions

while my body splays, chewing their food and they,

chewing on both breasts.

ROWAN TATE is a Romanian creative and curator of beauty. She reads nonfiction nature books, the backs of shampoo bottles, and sometimes minds. 

Art by Sanaa Bhuwalka