Matriarch. Poem about birth, life, and death.
“Matriarch”
Before my names,
before breath broke the seal of silence,
she held me— not in arms,
but in the red room
where shame had not yet built its church.
I was blood-warm,
a soft thing folded in velvet.
No shape,
just pulse—
a liquid inheritance.
She was tide.
I was all mouth,
trying to remember how to forget her.
Since then,
I’ve followed her through every echo—
the slip of condensation down glass,
the gleam on thighs after rain,
the sacred wetness between dream and waking.
She stains my joints,
hums in the sweat
after desire burns out.
A residue.
A woman before me
making herself into me.
I remember the pool,
nine years old—
dusk like bruised fruit.
I floated like a ghost
that forgot it had a body.
My heart drummed
as if I’d been locked back inside her.
Not safe,
but remembered.
That’s when I knew
this is what leaving feels like.
How a body unlearns the womb.
She slips away in increments
cracked lips,
peeling skin,
thirst that names itself too late.
She exits quietly.
Not storm—
but through ritual.
I see her in dreams.
We are both young and old.
She combs my hair with fingers.
She tells me nothing was ever mine—
not the softness,
not the body.
One day,
she’ll take it all back.
She will gather
bone,
blood,
salt,
and leave behind
a body unbuttoned,
a memory written in fluids,
a girl who once floated
too long in something
that loved her
too quietly to stay.
Vivienne Varay • she/her • Washington
Vivienne Varay is an interdisciplinary artist and maker whose work explores how materials carry memory, shaping identity and power. Rooted in craft and tactile processes, her practice examines the emotional and cultural weight of adornment, labor, and storytelling.
