Was a scared, stubborn baby, was a boy— stayed in Womb nine months and twenty seven years. Nine pounds going on one fifty! This womb of mine was a dark cave that rendered me senseless, but hey, ‘least it was warm— was food in tube. And it was safe— knew I would always be safe so long as I was tucked in there. I had my activities. One of my favorite things to do was pull my knees to my chest, tuck my head, and for no reason past reflex, close my eyes. Yep, that was how I slept, in a ball—could sleep that way for days, could sleep that way all winter, could sleep that way for good and I wouldn’t miss a thing. Although occasionally, I’d hear noises, would feel vibrations, some good & sweet— called those lickings cause they smoothed, like wet whispers or wind-stung chimes they were the humming of birds and the buzzing of bees, and they soothed, while the others, the loud & sudden ones, oh god, they were called thuddings because they made the tummy rock, they made the stomach fluids swell, carrying my breadbasket deeper into the ocean’s oven— took hand-clapped thunder to rock my cradle. When I couldn’t take all the so-called ‘stimulation,’ I would thrust my legs and jab never-cut nails into those padded walls of hers—take flesh of my flesh, a bone to pick unformed. ‘Let me out!’ I would scream; ‘no, no, no—not yet,’ I would moan, premature in my ways. Then I would curl up, rocking to and fro like a dead horse shoed to bowed ski boards and beat. We did the downhill rock. The ‘fetal position,’ I found out later it was called, also helped with the nightmares—
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