Duplicate Atoms

Mothers stomach was swollen with children;

stretched skin pulled tight against a sacred saline. 

Ying-yanged in a slosh, beginning as little fish. 

With hairpin bones that were fragile and cloned. 

Eyelashes sprouting like dandelions; 

soon to be belly buttons.

Facing each other, mirrored, hovering.

Defying what predated us. 

Mothers eyes were gleaming beams, 

mid-dinner we felt the pull of gravity.

Setting down her silverware, 

red meat on her plate pulsating.

Tiny wet fingers coincided with my xeroxed sidekick.

In secret dialect we chirped, "Don't let us come December,

please let us come sooner."

Eternity shifted as my heart hurt, began to quiver.

Hospital halls were undoubtably pale, patients huddled,

the three of us swung by atop a stiff gurney. 

Mothers eyes closed, viewing pink. 

Doctors pulled out their marble hands 

embellished with chrome,

tore flesh to find flesh. 

Did mother see our faces painted Halloween

green in the basement bathroom,

as a witch, a zombie!

Two infant babies now being rushed

withinn opaque rubber glove hands

to an incubator made of plastic

Three pound bodies, we yawned

and felt syringes like fiberglass

itch on immaculate thin lining.

Purple skin, yellow skin, pink skin.

Should I be born? Wrinkled, raised

out of a warm bath, 

entertained by complete tranquility?

Gasping for air, thick mucus congealed.

While white ghosts whispered

us gently out of mist, out of paper. 

It was though on that gurney,

inside incubators pumped with air,

I visioned this mud dust 

my life with a duplicate, as heaven, as clouds.

Where identical feet would feel pavement,

know scrub oak and rooftops.

Chilling heartaches or summertime among stars

Aged to twenty-two find great tears fall

from wild blue yonder; 

we had once belonged there. 

Mothers eyes closed

As ours stayed open; same eyes, Pacific oceans.

Our existing red-blonde, a video tape ongoing.

Pinned at the seam, 

music chattered our teeth 

in the mid-night

after kissing boys 

with rose petal eyes. 

Quietly born out of velvet blood

accompanied in the womb.

Aside vibrating impatient atoms

filled with lives terror,

equally knowing blissful bewitchment.

Blurry suckling eyes,

wide with pristine day dreams,

Under humming yellow

fluorescents.