Wounds of your Birth

when the worlds collided
you rose from the pain,

rending the sky,
your jagged seams

filling with silver balm,
only the moon daring to soothe,

running her fingers
over the wounds of your birth,

drowning in your scarred umbilicus;
sagarmāthā, don’t you feel it now,

under you the earth still throbs,
the earth still remembers,

listen to her today,
she tries to sing you back into her womb,

her lullaby is washed away again
by your endless tears.

Sagarmāthā is the Nepali name for Mount Everest. The Himalayas were formed by the collision of tectonic plates.