It was raining on the day I was born. Nighttime
I came out like a storm
from the thunder of my mother
I struck. My father
tells me I came out of her like a football.
I hope he means it
was obvious how stippled and stitched
and grippable I was then and always
have been. How much play and bruise-brown
possibility lived in my oblong
entry, my ogival lengths of skin.
It would certainly explain why
I’m ever throwing myself
into god’s hands, the wide receiver
of ocean. It was raining.
I was born a hail Mary unplanned
pass without a playbook
and I am no longer in the state
of passing. I was born already in
the borderland, in a doorway.
I was born less
than a year after my mother lost
the biggest game you can lose.
A sister, SIDS, unpossibled in the night.
Another rainy night.
The bleachers were still
mostly empty with the expectation
of a life intercepted. I am
my mother’s undaughter.
It was raining.
The playfield got muddy.
Wryly T. McCutchen’s poetry and nonfiction has appeared in Wilde Magazine, Alive With Vigor, The Prague Revue, and Raven Chronicles. They were awarded an MFA in creative writing with dual concentration in creative nonfiction and poetry from Antioch University and their first poetry manuscript, My Ugly and Other Love Snarls, is forthcoming from University of Hell Press.
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