"I Was There In The Room" Eve Ensler

 776: I Was There In The Room

"I Was There In The Room"

- Eve Ensler

I was there when her vagina opened.

We were all there her mother, her husband and I,

and the nurse from the Ukraine with her whole hand

up there in her vagina feeling and turning with her rubber

glove as she talked casually to us--like she was turning on a loaded faucet.

I was there in the room when the contractions

made her crawl on all fours,

made unfamiliar moans leak out of her pores

and still there after hours when she just screamed suddenly

wild, her arms striking at the electric air.

I was there when her vagina changed

from a shy sexual hole

to an archeological tunnel, a sacred vessel,

a Venetian canal, a deep well with a tiny stuck child inside,

waiting to be rescued.

I saw the colors of her vagina. They changed.

Saw the bruised broken blue

the blistering tomato red

the gray pink-the dark;

saw the blood like perspiration along the edges

saw the yellow, white liquid, the shit, the clots

pushing out all the holes, pushing harder and harder,

saw through the hole, the baby's head

scratches of black hair, saw it just there behind

the bone--a hard round memory,

as the nurse from the Ukraine kept turning and turning

her slippery hand.

I was there when each of us, her mother and I,

held a leg and spread her wide pushing

with all our strength against her pushing

and her husband sternly counting, "One, two, three,"

telling her to focus, harder.

We looked into her then.

We couldn't get our eyes out of that place.

We forget the vagina

what else would explain

our lack of awe, our lack of wonder.

I was there when the doctor

reached in with Alice in Wonderland spoons

and there as her vagina became a wide operatic mouth

singing with all its strength;

first the little head, then the gray flopping arm, then the fast swimming body, swimming quickly into our weeping arms.

I was there later when I just turned and faced her vagina.

I stood and let myself see her all spread, completely exposed

mutilated, swollen and torn,

bleeding all over the doctor's hands

who was calmly sewing her there.

I stood and her vagina suddenly

became a wide red pulsing heart.

The heart is capable of sacrifice.

So is the vagina.

The heart is able to forgive and repair.

It can change its shape to let us in.

It can expand to let us out.

So can the vagina.

It can ache for us and stretch for us, die for us

and bleed and bleed us into this difficult, wondrous world.

I was there in the room.

I remember.

[from 'the vagina monologues'...]

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