Unknown girl in the maternity ward-Anne Sexton
 
Child, the current of your breath is six days long.
You lie, a small knuckle on my white bed;
Lie, fisted like a snail, so small and strong at my breast. 
Your lips are animals; you are fed with love.
At first hunger is not wrong.
The nurses nod their caps; you are shepherded down starch 
halls with the other unnested throng 
in wheeling baskets. You tip like a cup; your head
Moves to my touch. You sense the way we belong. 
But this is not an institution bed.
You will not know me very long.
The doctors are enamel. They want to know 
the facts. They guess about the man who left me, some 
pendulum soul, going the way men go,
and leave you full of child. But our case history 
stays blank. All I did was let you grow. 
Now we are here for all the ward to see.
They thought I was strange, although 
I never spoke a word. I burst empty of 
you, letting you learn how the air is so. 
The doctors chart the riddle they ask of me
and I turn my head away. I do not know.
Yours is the only face I recognize.
Bone at my bone, you drink my answers in, 
six times a day I prize your need,
the animals of your lips, your skin growing
warm and plump. I see your eyes lifting
their tents. They are blue stones, they begin
to outgrow their moss. You blink in surprise 
and I wonder what you can see, my funny kin,
as you trouble my silence. I am a shelter of lies. 
Should I learn to speak again, or hopeless in 
such sanity will I touch some face I recognize?
Down the hall the baskets start back. My arms
fit you like a sleeve, they hold 
catkins of your willows, the wild bee farms 
of your nerves, each muscle and fold 
of your first days. Your old man's face disarms
the nurses. But the doctors return to scold me.
I speak. It is you my silence harms. 
I should have known; I should have told them 
something to write down. My voice alarms
my throat. "Name of father-none." I hold
you and name you bastard in my arms.
And now that's that. There is nothing more 
that I can say or lose. 
Others have traded life before
and could not speak. I tighten to refuse
your owling eyes, my fragile visitor.
I touch your cheeks, like flowers. You bruise 
against me. We unlearn. I am a shore 
rocking you off. You break from me. I choose
your only way, my small inheritor,
and hand you off, trembling the selves we lose. 
Go child, who is my sin and nothing more.