This Kind of Love
loving my children is an internal violence.
a persistent, profound murdering
of all that is not soul-light.
my blood moves in sacrificial screams
releasing the worsts of my fears into the
navy-night skies that yearn for my
my obsessive worry-pain. the stars are
thirsty for the slick wound that is forever
mourning the loss of these lives from my womb.
loving my children is an internal violence—
the best of me in astral explosion, beholdened.
VANESSA SHIELDS 