Birth Symphony
By Sarah Hernandez
I am opening myself up in full bloom, beneath the crescent moon. The vibrations of my voice welcome the sensations further, and with every contraction, I bring you closer to the light at the end of this tunnel, that is life. The contractions move through me like waves, and when they crash, the sounds echo back and become me. I am life and all of its transitions. I am creation and destruction. I am pleasure and pain. I am violence, and it’s laughter. I am the sun, moon, and stars. I am cosmic alignment and exploding chaos. I am love and it’s madness. The sounds rise and fall through my root chakra, and I am anchored deeper into change. I am stillness in motion. I am descending deeper into time and space until it loses all meaning, and all that’s there is my voice, but it isn’t even mine. It is the voice of eternal silence. That dark, uncharted territory we all know as death. The white light churns and fizzles inside me, and I am life. The darkness withers it all away, and I am death. My body secretes sweat from every pore. When the wave rises and falls, I am hot. When it dissolves, I am cold. I am on all fours, butt naked, ass in the air, when the extra midwife shows up. I manage to introduce myself in this state when I am death. When I am life again, I focus on the word on her shirt—Believe.