Motherhood

The disappearing is gentle, at first. Not like
the woman behind the magician’s curtain, poof
and she’d gone. No, it’s more of an erosion.
Pieces of you crumble, foundation cracked.
Not quite a crumbling so much as dissolution.
What I mean to say is, the gnawing at your center
starts slow, then gives way to decay. The rotting,
someone you used to know and now have
grown to hate. I realize I should choose
my words more carefully, but when I say
my baby sucked the marrow of my used-to-be,
spit the pith and kept on chewing, I mean
I wasn’t ready
to be quite so
erased.