“Eve with Cain” by Marilyn Sears Bourbon

I am born with my grandfather’s name,
A joy to break the fever
Of his death—
My mother’s mourning sweated
Out—labor
Of loss, delivery of me.

Me into the world of linens, a whiteness
Of nurses, of lilies, of sun-paled walls.

We are our tears—mother and me,
A weep, a wail,
At the first pang of a new death
In the distance, at the last expulsion
Of placenta.
Recovery is ours to begin.

She in sleep—replenishment.
Me in purple bouts of struggle.

Jonathan H. Scott lives in Birmingham, Alabama. His poetry and short-stories have been published in The Able Muse, Blood and Thunder, Hospital Drive, Measure, Muse and Stone, and others.