For Self Preservation

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Places hold memories –
like mothers carry fetuses
in their wombs,
except these fragmented recollections
float perpetually in the thick
opaque fluid of lives past.

I am breathing the air
of old cities,
sharing it with distant people,
through a placenta of time.
I will be born out of these places
an old woman, nurtured and shunned
by their essence,
or a lifeless baby
strangled by the very mother
that gave it life.

I am ready now
to be birthed.
Someone call a midwife,
order forceps,
scrape me out
like a mound of dead flesh
or a cancerous tumor.
Sever this umbilical cord
that ties me to these cities
and these people
who have chosen to forget me.