I’m about to share the romance of pregnancy in a way that might be difficult for those who are trying to conceive or suffered an early pregnancy loss… in the right moment, though, it might help facilitate the grief of those experiences? Just a warning.
This is my jam right now. It wasn’t written about pregnancy or motherhood, just a love song, but.. I can’t help but think that it really is about motherhood. There are intimate relationships, and then there’s the one relationship so intimate that it actually involves carrying the other person around all day within your body. We may fantasize about having that kind of intimacy with our lovers, but we can only ever truly have it with our babies.
The video has a lot of parallels to baby loss as well — loving someone who is shrouded, almost as in a dream, then discovering they cannot love you back (“turned to stone”, just like in so many fairy tales, just like in the Bible). And suddenly they’re gone, as though they’d never been there. The only trace is the physical injury, the physical change.
I’ll cut the soft pockets, let bleed
Over the rocky cliffs that you leave
To peer over and not forget what feet are
Splitting threads of thunder over me
Listen closely, closely to the floor
Emitting all its graces through the pores
You make a fine shrine in me
You build a fine shrine in me
That I might see with my chest and sink
Into the edges round you
Into the lakes of quarry’s that brink
On all the edges round you
Get a little closer, let fold
Cut open my sternum, and pull
My little ribs around you
The lungs of me be crowns over you
Get a little closer, let fold
Cut open my sternum, and pull
My little ribs around you
The rungs of me be under, under you
Wrapped Up In Parentheses 