Inside my mother’s belly, body
of the borrowed, I burrow
within a womb, congealed—
my mise en abyme, a story within
a story to follow

but I can’t see to see. Sartre said
existence precedes essence, and it’s true
we moved through broken water,
laboring a life—

a picture of desire and infinite regret
till, reading to the end, we sense

the props all fall and, cued,
what’s left of us swims weightless back
through liquid day and night

to claim the moral,
mark our passages as one
as a hollow nesting doll emerges
from the matryoshka
in a child’s delight.