Your minutes become the rooms of a labyrinth,
 one concentric womb en route to another
 mere membranes apart. Each labor awaits you.
 You yearn to scream like a saint robbed of words,
 to pray in tongues long dismissed. Your hands
 dam your sides, trammel your ribs, each one a wing
 for the sobs, sharp and ponderous as vultures, 
 that peck inside your chest, believing 
 they can rip a hole wide enough to beat free.