5 a.m. By Kaitlin Solimine “Pregnancy brain” is a state of mind, is a 5 a.m. wake up call to pee, nose sick toddler in my bed, his feet against my back and the baby breaststroking my cervix. Of what am I in service to this time? Of what will I be called to survive? I tell his father birth is like dying. The closest you’ll get to it. Not you/him. Me/her. His eyes are wide and tired. Don’t try to talk to a bird. In the dream before 5 a.m., the Sea of Japan is mentioned. “There’s long maternity leave there, good healthcare,” a tall, white man says. “The Sea of Japan is a good place to ride out the pandemic.” I wake, take note — Find the Sea of Japan on a map, pin for future pandemics. I book depth hypnosis. Massage. Home organizer. I’m clearing something in order to give birth to something else: but what? My third eye pulses as soon as this miracle baby is conceived — at 5 a.m., I press my palm to my forehead, ask for divination but the sound machine set to wake in an hour doesn’t answer. I’m hungry for protein pancakes. “The body doesn’t lie,” the midwives said before they left us in the basement, their bodies pulled to another birth. They were distracted when they came. They were holding space for someone else’s birth/death, the walking of the coals. I want to cup Silvia Plath’s words in my hands — “The swans are gone. Still the river remembers how white they are. It strives after them with its lights, finds its shapes in a cloud.” A Townsend’s warbler returns again to the budding lilac above where the 18-year-old cat is buried. There’s a story about Townsend, 19th century
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