Before She Was Born

Not yet a silver sin — all lanugo, vernix sheen, sheer skin slough.
Not yet called forth to map a vague path home.
She was a green cloud fomenting, roads filled with boiling blood.
She was enough to spook houses that woke to apples and a spark of sun —
Enough to tap the whirring, purring feline from a nap
on the glowering abdomen. I rattled. She roused to water,
that slurry, that grey pool. Raised a dot of fist to suck a thumb.
What held sway beyond that beyond.