Inanna Returns

On the sixth day after birth, I stand
under the flow of water, hear an echo

from the abyss, taunting:
if my daughter is to live, I must return

to the dead. She is large, and I’ve become
so small. The thought is as real as a desert

mirage, as real as the lantern of eight sleepless 
nights. My meds are kicking in, 

hormones rise high. Breasts uncovered, my hair swirls
around my head like leeks. The milk 

hardens like scum, the filth of mother, 
from Middle Dutch modder, dregs, lees. 

A fiend drinks the leftovers in my bed
at night, reminds me that I am my father’s 

daughter. Perhaps this time I will lose 
my mind. The therapist says, Baby Blues

lasts fourteen days. Nobody can say 
the word. Depression. 

It would scare the neighbors.
The women in the kitchen whisper

What’s wrong with her? And 
Where is her mother?

One morning, I return
my mother’s call. She says, Only you

can be her mother. Only you can 
return from the dead.

My lament is made of thunder, my breath 
a tempest in the tunnel of my throat.

How can I become a mother
without a mother by my side?

Geula Geurts is a Dutch born poet and essayist living in Jerusalem. A 2021 Best of the Net nominee, her work has recently appeared or is forthcoming in Guesthouse, Pleiades, The Penn Review, Salamander, Juked, Raleigh Review, Radar, CALYX, Spoon River and EcoTheo. Her lyric essay The Beginnings of Fire was published by CutBank Books (Summer 2021). Her manuscript Tiny Bones Glowing was selected as first runner-up in the 2020 Red Hen Press Benjamin Saltman Award. Her mini-chapbook Like Any Good Daughter was published by Platypus Press. She is a graduate of the Shaindy Rudoff Graduate Program in Creative Writing at Bar Ilan University, and works as a literary agent at the Deborah Harris Agency.