Leila Bilick

I emerged from my mother inside 

the caul, armor of amnion  

easing entry, beholding the wild 

seascape from a glass-bottomed boat. 

It is only here in these waters —

in translucence and with strange separateness 

from my fluid limbs 

waving freely underneath me 

the way a jellyfish moves through its world 

itself a body of water 

bell-bodied, always ringing itself 

beyond, never clinging —

that I see I’ve worn the second skin 

all my life, that it’s poison

and that I’ve been ready for some time now.

Peel away and pour forth 

into the midwife’s cupped hands.

I let her hold me, then let her 

let me go

into the mangrove’s tangle.