This is the fault of many people, but it began with elisem.

They are always she:
untold foreseeings, like physical babes, usurp the womb.
They come draped in the same potentiality
as any other gestation, each secretly scheming
to be, if not an only child, then a last one.

She nurses them out of her self,
rocks herself back and forth around them,
speaks them to soothe them, and is herself quieted--and not alone.

Every birthing ends in giving the child away.