Unfurled
The sculptress runs her careful touch over the swelling-smooth belly, feels movement, shifting, under the membrane, catches the tremulous pulse in her palm, knows it is ready. Still, the cold stone fights against giving its child to the light; to let the air finger its delicate features, to offer its terrible neweness to death, so the unborn creeps backwards, buries its face. The sculptress turns surgeon, opens the skin, beckons the bird, flapping soul, to the surface, cradles its twisting form in her hands, holds it tight, chisels away at the surplus, cutting an exist, a clear open path for an opening eye, a nose, a mouth, a half-born angel, young as the world, emerging from stone; shown, not made: its flowing hair, its one arm raised, its one freed wing, unfurled.