I have known what it is to be a portal - a poem about infinity

 I have felt the strangeness of a tiny baby primate about to be born,

Moving their limbs inside my body, while their head was outside.

I have knelt over a new born baby as my body rushed with oxytocin.

And known a face for the first time, that was made by my body

And shaped by the genetic ancestry my husband and I carry in our blood.

I have cried with effort and released fear to the sky

From an outside bath 

While my husband ferried hot water and care, with quick hands in copious amounts.

In the waves of labouring,

I have wanted to say “no” and called my strength to say “open more” instead.

I have cried out for help over and over as my body transitioned to the final stages of labour.

I have tried to hide from the sensations of enormous pressure and power and pain and vulnerability and love and overwhelm.

And I failed, because there was no way but through.

I have birthed in a sanitised hospital birthing room.

I have birthed in my own bed.

I have felt my body steady in a task it has yet to accomplish.

I have felt my body heal from birthing a person.

I have felt my concept of who I am slip away into wakeful nights and forgotten cups of coffee.

I have felt shame and guilt and fear and doubt

As I watch my children grow.

As I try to protect and yet allow.

As I witness their growing personhood.

I have known the relief and grief of their growing independence. 

I have watched my body hold space for my mind as it ascends the mountain of birthing.

My body, which held space for them for many months, while they grew to be world ready.

And I have known what it is to be asked to hold space over and over for them as they grew up

In the world, outside the womb.

And I have failed sometimes to live up to the exemplary space holding my body provided

And continues to provide, for me, for my mind, for my ancestors, for my connection to ecosystems

Every day.

When I think of love, I think of my body, and the immensity of its work to hold space. 

To withstand the pain of heartache, of expectations, of trauma, of growing my children,

Because I asked it to.

To be present with me, even in my darkest and most shameful moments.

To allow me to hate it and not retaliate.

To witness my dismissal of it and the ways I take it for granted.

And still, to rise to meet me, to hold me, to enable me to live out these days.

My body is there, caught between my ancestors and my descendants, 

Tying me to all the animals this body evolved from

And all the plant kin and animal kin it has ever eaten,

All the hands those foods ever passed through,

The ancestors who carried those beans in their pockets,

Holding space for them all.

And holding space for me in the meantime.

My body is love. Suspended between all pasts and futures,

Between all states of being and living and dying.

Teaching me in its own way.

Like a midwife, witnessing a birthing, a becoming.

Holding space for the possibility that I might exist.

I know what it is to be a portal. Between different infinities.