leaving

I am the woman who does not yet know her middle is torn out.

I am the awestruck woman who
moves her fingers into a well of pulped flesh,
who touches the pearly new-cut fat of red organs, disbelieving.
I cannot recognize
these severed pink tubes spilled out like
wiring on some disemboweled machine.

Today, I am like some injured woman
that instant she recognizes
the pulped and short-circuiting thing as herself.
Neck snapping upwards,
I am the shrieking against the irrevocable.
I am the tongue-scraping, bone-against-bone feeling
of rage; I am the unsexed tightness across the
chest; the glass grit dug up into the palms.

Then comes the blankness,
the seeping out of outcries and
the calming of revolt.
Now I know I cannot be
stopped-up. I am the girl
clutching loose quarts of blood.