In honor of National Poetry Month: A Poem

I was silenced too long by the sound of my own
heartbeat.
Joy in living and grief in the passing of love.
I always knew I would write stories,
but I dwelt
in the glow of a thirty-year literary pregnancy.
Labor came on without warning.
The stories I stored through a thirty year gestation
now speak through the silence, that heartbeat
of fear, of failure, of success.
I wish sometimes for the old stillness,
but then I know, labor
once started must finish.

--started 9/22/06, finished (for now) 4/11/09