Birthing a Sonnet
Writing my first Sonnet was like a pregnancy.
I knew I wanted to give birth to one
and took on the parental responsibility
knowing it wouldn't... or shouldn't take nine months.
There'd been no morning sickness nausea
but there were times when I wanted to change my mind.
"Too bad, kiddo," I thought. "You gotta see this through.
because you can't put Humpty Dumpty back inside his egg
once the shell has cracked and broken."
Determined not to have yet another unfinished poem
take up space in a notebook, I persevered
spoiling myself with ice cream, chocolate fudge slivers,
a few cherries, and a liberal squirt of caramel sauce.
I indulged myself with a reward after the first verse.
I've never liked dill pickles, so when I couldn't find
the right rhyming word for verse two, I didn't eat those.
Pregnancy or not, I wasn't going to suffer puckered lips
because my muse refused to be pregnant with me.
She'd have made a useless midwife anyway.
Said she'd be back when she got a birth announcement.
I suffered alone and pushed this baby out
with the same force a laborious woman uses to birth a child.
No epidural in the spine, although I did partake
in a bottle of wine during the entire nascence process.
"LOOK," I screamed. "After fourteen hours of labor
it's an eight-pound boy."
Actually, it was more like eight hours of labor
to deliver a fourteen-line Sonnet, and lots of anxiety.
I took comfort knowing this baby wouldn't need breast feeding.
Now that it's here, it will be reread a time or ten...
a line edited here or a tweak somewhere.
It will be mollycoddled, burped, and pampered
but not with the naked butt baby kind.
I'll sing it to sleep when I'm the one needing a lullaby,
and I'll be glad it doesn't cry for a two am bottle.
I won't worry about it getting sick or growing up too quickly
because ten years from now it'll still be my baby.
Birthing a child is difficult work but we both survived the labor.
and my firstborn is not crumpled in a basket, lying on the floor.
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