The pains I had brought
when breaking the bonds,
you had built
with your uterus-glow,
not once
but over and over,
(as if we’d preserved
an umbilical bond
to slice at each parting)
still left you with nothing
but love for your son.
Still — when sitting,
while holding your hand,
waiting and feeling each one
of your heartbeat,
I’m thinking that maybe,
that now when it’s you
that are leaving
I’m left with the pain
I always have caused you.
Amaya is hosting at dVerse, and the prompt is about birth. I do not have children, but once I was born, and I thought about the fact that birth is also a way of parting… and parting is always about pain.
—
November 12, 2019
Björn Rudbergs writings 
Yes it is a parting from the body but rarely from the soul. My mother told me this and she never lied.
I like the way this poems spirals round – the repeated partings, the final parting, the parallel between birth and death. The rhythm keeps it going.
Oh Bjorn…..I think your mum left you in the not too distant past, if I’m remembering correctly? I had the absolute privilege of holding my mother’s hand when she died….I thought it only right since she brought me into the world that I be with her when she left this world. In my perspecitve the most incredible thing about birth is the umbilical cord that is, yes, cut….but it’s indelible mark is left on our belly….a visible sign always of our attachment to our mothers.
Lillian, that’s lovely what you said about the umbilical cord. I needed to read that. Thank you!
I think you touched on something raw and real here; the fact is we all have hurt our mothers, in one way or another. I find myself thinking of those times, but I know it is all a part of life.
Such a warm and sorrowful telling Bjorn. I’m glad you have/had a loving bond with your mom. To parents, the pain comes with the territory, but it never diminishes the love a mother feels for her child.
Bjorn, that ending is very neatly done and affecting.
Powerful piece, Bjorn. Insightful and painfully beautiful.
Heavy duty poetics, rife with personal pain and raw honesty. I lost my mother before she was 40, to cancer.
I love this:
“built with your uterus-glow”
That parenthetical is powerful.
This is a beautiful poem. Switching places and pain… the story of life!
I love your take on this prompt. The last lines ring true on the pain of parting.
Your poem made me smile and brought a tear to my eye, Björn. As a mother I know the feeling of parting from a child, I feel it every time I say goodbye to my daughter, and as a daughter I know it, from my own leaving and from my mother’s final leaving – I still feel it almost three years later. As Lill said, the umbilical cord may have been cut but it is never broken. I love the compound noun ‘uterus-glow’.
Oh wow, you have gone deep into your mother’s felt experience. But a mother’s love is alchemy, and can take pain over and over again and make something beloved of it. As in in the birth of a son. The extraordinary pain of birth and life forgotten and forgiven, when she gets to hold you. And she would do it all over, again and again.
What a beautiful post, Bjorn! I “second” Amaya’s comment that a mother would do it all again, over and over…for love. This resonates with me as our youngest son moved out of our home this summer.
There is parting on both ends of life, and pain. But as a mother I can say that nothing is more precious than my children. (K)
kaykuala
Yes, parting is painful but in this case it is accompanied with love!
Hank