Embroidering in Clara’s language,

my ovum, my egg, sheds its snakeskin follicle

and throws itself into my darkness.

It is the fertile crescent tonight, and it’s my

great-great-grandmother’s fingers that reach out

to the oval shimmer,

fimbria pulling the delicate pearl into my cistern,

my red sinew.

I can see the Tor from here! I shout,

climbing mound after mound of the Green Mother’s body.

The Earth is fertile. And I have my poppy seed.

It is symphonic and delightful.

Eat the water, my pearl, my shining descendant,

I say to star in my belly,

eat it with your hands.

This egg tells me that ova need more than water,

that they desire fruit like their other mother.

I am an orchard woman now.

Blastocyst, zygote,

cells dividing in their miniature geometry.

In a library of embryos, this one would shine

and sing upon me–

unfolding like lace made of light and new flesh.

She is the animal, burrowing, and I am the dirt,

and I am already full of her;

her scent, her texture.

She looks at me in the dark,

and I think, there is no country, no volcano

wide enough to hold this child.

I call out anyway:

Come to me now, in these startling millennia,

and show me your first, truest form–

scarlet, sharp, and female.

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ALORAH WELTI is a nineteen-year-old Minnesota-born feminist, synesthete, and emerging poet and artist. Her work has been featured in the anthology Re-membering with Goddess: Healing the Patriarchal Perpetuation of Trauma (Girl God Books, 2022) and is upcoming in Allium, A Journal of Poetry & Prose. She currently lives on stolen Mohican and Wabanaki land, now called Berkshire County, Massachusetts, with her family.