To Mother,
your mother-
who carried you in her own ocean
for 9 whole human months
and for 9 indescribable eons in some other pre-human meter of time.
You who were formed from her bones-
formed from the minerals of the mountains of your ancestors
for as long back as we can remember.
To this place,
where blood holds memory
beyond language, beyond calendar,
beyond any fear.
To the ocean that remains with you -
ebbing & flowing within your spine,
echoing salt-water pholyphonies of the eternal wombtime.
To the mother who birthed you-
your great-great-great grandmother's grandchild-
who greeted the ecstasy & shock of your arrival and first song.
We remember you. We thank you.
To The Living Womb which holds or releases life,
our second heart,
a sacrificial offering.
To the wombman who's place it is to choose
as Sovereign-
To give birth or give death
as it's due.
To the placental twin who once resided there with you,
though only one of you stayed to live in this topside world.
To all the ones who never made it here-
because it wasn't yet time,
because we said no,
because it wasn't safe,
because it was a mystery.
Or to the ones -
who came and then left,
or arrived stillborn-
taking with them some part of us.
To all those who came from The Nothing, and all those who returned-
as we will all return someday,
And come back
through the womb of a woman.
We love you.
To the ovaries of our mother that once held us as a tiny miracle
waiting patiently, an infinity within her
as she lived & grew inside our grandmother's womb.
To the plushness that eventually welcomed each of us,
a soft velvet cushion to rest into,
as we drank in the elixir of mortality through our bellies.
To the blood that nourished us through that cord-
made up of water & iron & prayers
flowed down from our mother's heart,
through her liver, her kidneys - miles to reach us.
To her heartbeat on which we learned to dance-
from that undifferentiated darkness
into ears, eyes, mouth & hands to one-day hear/ see/ speak/ hold.
To the warmth that incubated us from seed to embryo-
from a hope or a dream or a fear-
into a fully-fledged, fully-four-limbed creature,
with no effort on our part.
To that place & time when our heart-brain-sex were all one organ,
and we were identical to any fish-amphibian-bird-mammal on this earth-
when we knew what it was to be kin with all.
Before the word came to be,
and made a demarcation between woman and man,
between "me" and "you",
between possibility and impossibility.
We offer you our awe.
And to the hundreds of cycles each wombman has lived & witnessed-
the ripening of this crimson fruit & its dissolution,
the red rivers & tides which christened our fertile years.
To the ones who now hold their blood.
To the ones who have surrendered their wombs.
To the Womb that always was.
And always will be.
Portal,
Chalice,
Palace
of re-membering formless into form.
To all the creations - human and non-human -
that have been birthed from this place.
To the primordial magic that lives within & beyond us,
To woman who is a channel for Creation.
Through the centuries, and centuries and centuries... she has loved,
and gestated,
and grown a full moon in her belly,
and birthed-
with the tears & perspiration of millennia-
the new generations of humanity-
Through all the wars, through every displacement, through every forgotten dark age,
Through the annihilation of rainforests, mountain valleys, and whole villages-
Woman continues.
Life continues
Thanks to woman.
Though they have tried, and though they will keep trying-
to strip you of your fertile power,
to kill or take away your children,
to deny you the right to choose, to birth, to feed, to fuck, to bleed, to breathe, to exist.
Though they have told you: you are a sinner, a whore, a burden, a worker, a liability.
Though they have attempted to re-write the symphony of your internal orchestra,
to convince you your Nature was defective, misdirected or simply inefficient,
that you were broken, or barren-
They were wrong.
Though they are working to engineer their own mechanical wombs,
to modify your heirloom seeds,
to steal your inheritance- the one passed down
for unknowable human lifetimes.
Though they may try
to make you obsolete,
They will not win.
To womban, to all those with wombs-
who have endured the losses, aches & betrayals
of this world of forgetting,
May your womb yet hold the memory of sweetness
before any wounding or shame.
May you be always the preserver of our Legacy-
of all the fecund things
that grow up and sing and renew themselves
forever and beyond the grasp of man.
Above all things,
May you live.
-Pooja Prema
©2022
Photo from "The Living Womb" in Rites of Passage: 20/20 Vision
Cure-ated by Sokhna Heathyre Mabin
Photo Credit: Jill Goldman