CAN SNAKES CRY?

written from the underworld (aka my first trimester)

I haven’t held my pen, this pen, in months.

I am not the same Catherine I was before October came, before darkness swallowed me whole, before I was initiated into my soul’s chosen path of motherhood, before death returned with new wisdom. Death.

There’s life, an entire universe of cells and Spirit and infinitely wise units of consciousness expanding and pulsing as a tiny human vessel within me. Life.

It feels somewhat fitting that on a solstice week when the light returns so do my words, but they are not the same. You may not even recognize them. In fact, I cry as I weave them now, reigniting an intimacy that feels raw and so deeply tender.

The enormity of creation moved through me for the past few months, breaking open every door and splintering my insides completely. A snake swallowing its biggest catch, paralyzed and breathless as it expands so rapidly it forgets what the body can handle. Can snakes cry? I have not stopped.

And she’s still moving through me, that maternal force of creation is still fine-tuning my entire being. But I’m in my second trimester and I can somehow exhale for longer than two seconds again. I can hold my pen again, even if my hand shakes simply because the thought of creation of any kind has humbled me in ways I don’t even know if I can put into words. If I can trust words, my favorite forms of structure with something so fluid, so mysterious, so big, so unknown by the structures that once held me.

When I sat with grandmother Aya in the spring, she very clearly highlighted to me— you are not here to provide answers. You are here to ask better questions. Her guidance stings now because questions are all I have left. I searched like a madwoman for story, poetry, myth to get me through the first trimester. I begged for answers. I looked through the entire catalog of Pinterest and TikTok videos for guidance on death in the first trimester. Not the death of my child, but my own death. The million deaths cutting me open before I could even scream for help. I found nothing. In one book, Inanna’s journey was brought forth in comparison to birth, to that surrender. And while yes, I laid there completely naked, exposed like Inanna, holding only questions streaming down my cheeks, I felt alone and confused. Is it just me?

For years now, I have seen how my spiritual path, my return to my truest self has reshaped me into someone who makes others uncomfortable. My questions aren’t tidy and well behaved. And asking about the cycle of death during pregnancy is Lilith-wild and messy. I had no answers and I still don’t. I guess now I can just hear Aya, my own inner voice, more clearly. Answers aren’t the point. There are no answers. Is that liberating or terrifying? There are no answers. Wholeness cannot be processed in an answer. Creation, life, that which is far bigger than me cannot be processed in a single magic pill.

There’s this messiness, this wildness, an animal ruthlessness and quiet knowing that courses through me. I can’t shape a poem right now, I feel caged. And my poetry has never even been proper. It never followed rules or mirrored classical training. If I think about it all now as a pattern, the months before I found out I was pregnant, I could only write stream of consciousness pieces, like my entire being was preparing to become the ocean once again.

I know all pregnancies are different. Not everyone descends into the underworld in the first few weeks to taste themselves as formless briny water, as an infinity so vast all the lights shut off and the mind can only process nothingness. I wondered every day if it was the loud and pronounced Cancer placements in my cosmic blueprint, or the harsh weavings of the planets this winter, or the sometimes suffocating childhood pain I swallowed to survive returning to be cleared, or my Soul’s courage in feeling that which my ancestors ached and grieved and were called crazy for with the tools that I now hold. I wondered what kind of infinite mess and death and transformation my Soul signed up for. I even wondered if unclothing myself to poetry, to writing, to words had cursed me into feeling too deeply. But there are no answers, just like there were no solutions, no matter how hard all those around me tried. Sometimes we are fire, focused and determined, and sometimes we are a kind of water we cannot even name. We look at the ocean and what do we actually see? Well, that. Sometimes we’re an ocean so full of mystery and wildness, it can only keep taking you deeper and deeper.

My loved ones keep saying I’m back. I think they were just as scared for me as I was and are holding on to any part of me that feels familiar. I feel like I’m walking around with a secret, in the form of my child nestled in my womb, that will never let me be the version of me I once was. Sometimes I think I swim so deep that my Soul’s desire to keep going deeper, shattering and rebuilding, terrifies me. How deep am I here to swim? Well, there are no answers.