The Women Who Carry

 

I.

A woman carries her uterus in a plastic grocery bag

floating in formaldehyde, stoppered in a bell jar:

inside her, the void sewn tight to stop her organs

from migrating, where the blue whales churning

in that black hole of hunger have ceased singing

and the holy land infants wade, voiceless nouns

into an empty red sea: she carries.

 

II.

And when the meteor, thirty-three years in transit

tore clean from course, right ovary a projectile

of cyst upon cyst, of the stuff made of star dust,

the doctor said what do you modern women expect

this biblical reckoning as she carries two truths

as one gnawing guilt- in her morning coffee cones

packed with grass: she carries.

 

III.

She carries an algal bloom eating the faces clean

to the jawbone, ripping the fish gills to streamers-

each follicle, bleached coral retreating from the waves:

beyond a certain depth is stillness. Imagine an event

horizon in warming red waters- a void surface

where choices cease. Still, she carries cetacean choirs

and iron from the stars, birthing toxic pigment

 

into a wild toothed sea.

 

Myfanwy Williams

Myfanwy Williams (she/her) is a Sydney-based queer poet and writer of Filipino Welsh heritage. Her writing explores themes of identity, ecology, and intersectional justice. Her poetry and writing have been published in Plumwood Mountain Journal, About Place Journal, Wild Roof Journal, Panorama Journal of Travel and Place, Alocasia, AAWP Meniscus Literary Journal, Clarion Poetry, The Winged Moon Literary Journal, The Madrigal Literary Journal, The Crank, Crow & Crosskeys, Querencia Press, and others. She was nominated for the 2024 Pushcart Prize and holds degrees in literature, psychology and social science.