It’s a girl.

It’s a girl.

I can’t remember being born

Some people say they can

But that is just wishful thinking

Adopting a Klienian

Paranoid schizoid position

The pretence of early learning

The immediacy of personhood

Which to my mind

Takes a while to assert itself.

I remember the cutting of

My firstborn’s cord,

The splash of warm fluid across my face

The surprise of the first cry.

I was given leave to go,

Whilst the clean-up crew came in

To make the tableaux presentable,

Stunned into silence

My face

Covered in splashes,

A rictus grin

And my eyes

Just on the right side of panic.

I stumbled down a corridor

Barely conscious of myself

Looking for a phone

Being asked questions

When I had forgotten to check.

Having to go back into

The delivery room ask

The nurse

So the information I would give

To parents and family was correct.

I felt inadequate

No more than a child myself

The task so formidable

The responsibility so great.

Many years later

On my own

In the dead of night

Lying awake

Trying to process the meaning of things

I realise

None of that hapless feeling

Has really gone

There are times when I am glad of it.

Complacency and a belief in competence

Seem to go hand in hand with hubris.

Better to believe I can do better

Than to rest on my laurels

Whatever they might be.

Look what happened to the Romans

And the Greeks before them,

Apart from Pythagoras, philosophy

And the Oedipal Complex

What did they ever do for us?