Intimate bestiary

If someone wanted to be a tortoise
it would be me:
to fashion from a conical section
the prehistoric hub of my election
lodged in the dorsal spine.

Being a tortoise
has something ideal:
it sports wrinkles from its youth
and in a sense literally real
grows bigger with the years
– more years
more bulk.

Post-matrimonial,
without family ties
once its eggs are laid
like each and every woman
naturally daughter of the moon,
nevertheless
not a single schism
between her and her hearth gods lies.

With all these lows and highs,
for me
who is in me
– without balm pure pressure to go –
it matters little that her progress
on the surface is slow:
that
would give endurance to me
making me able to enter the sea
– that covers two thirds of the world’s
ground –
knowing that if I go down
I gain velocity.

Mirta Rosenberg