The Birth of the Womb

By Natalie Gachoka

 

It started with a cough lodged between my breaths, stuffing my throat and pressing against my lungs like water drowning bubbles. It was a pain that grew into a beast that could no longer be contained, a feral need to break free from its cage. For days on end, the sickness would expand, and each day, it would be a struggle.

I would cough again, again, and again. Each time, sharper—a knife cushioned by the edge of my ribs, sculpting my bones into art. I sought out the wisdom of men, but doctors said it was nothing. My pain was a delusion I concocted in the haze of dreariness.

They could not see the pain I was experiencing, as they had no notion of anything beyond the ideas of man’s medicine. So, I let it fester within me, a dormant sickness that seemingly had no cure.

The beach became my comfort, where sand tears met the edge of the Earth, and the sky bent into the sea like a prayer. The foam of the tide whispered howls of love. I would walk on the pier, the waves becoming one with me.

The air shimmered with something not quite wind. The waves pulled toward me like hands. On the eve of its birth, on my strolls spectating the seagull’s mate with the sun, the seed of the cough sprouted, a single petal, pale yellow and soft as silk. It was streaked with blood and lace.

An excruciating battle commenced within my body, every inch of me recoiling in the fight. I was being rewritten from the inside. The core of my being was fracturing under the weight of the invasion within me. It was not just my body; it was my soul, every breath, every heartbeat, resisting.

My body writhed as the root tore through my flesh. My blood was the soil that fed the bloom, devouring me from the inside out until my very organs pulsed with their hunger. The roots spread with merciless purpose, forcing their way out, carrying the scent of a sickly perfume— a rot disguised as nectar.

Was this a curse? A prophecy? A rebirth? I did not know. Only that it would not relent. The flower had transformed me—its roots were my intestines, leaves my veins, petals my voice. I tried to scream, clawing at my skin.

I tried to peel the bark away from my skin, but the more I grasped, the more my flesh dissolved—oozing, sloughing off in ribbons. My vision became blurred with golden spores. The roots crept upwards, threading through the hollows of my skull, bursting through my sinuses, coiling around my jaw, claiming every hollow space as their own.

I thrashed on the beach; the sand crawled towards me, drowning my feet in grain. I felt like a sinner being punished for the sin of man. I prayed, denied, raged. I wept at any foot that would answer my prayer.

"What did I deserve the pain? Do I need to become a faithful servant of the wind?" I asked the sky. "Will you spare me if I bow low enough?"

The tide licked at my feet like a loyal animal. I watched the sun shatter into the ocean and wondered if it hurt to sink. A melodic hum vibrated between my ribs. I was losing hold of my body; it was transforming into Her instrument, any note to be played by whim.

My pulse felt foreign as a symphony played through my bones. I was being orchestrated by Her—the mother, the Earth’s conductor, guiding me to Her will. I screamed. I dug into the roots and yanked at them with trembling hands.

I tried burning them with salt water, stabbing them with driftwood, and biting at the vines as they slipped up my throat. "Whoever you are? Whatever you are, leave me be." The wind laughed at my plight. My muscles trembled in resistance. My skin blistered where Her bloom pressed near the surface. I spit petals into the sand.

Who was She? The sea, the storm that carried my birth? The Earth that cradled me from the moment my feet first touched Her soil? I could no longer tell where I ended and the bloom began, our bodies entwined, indistinguishable—like roots weaving into each other, one form growing into the next. But there was comfort in that union.

Was this what She had destined me to be—tethered to Her whims, kneeling at Her mercy, a servant bowed to the curve of Her knee? She caressed the slick of my womb, ready to be opened to release the budding flower, nurtured from the river of my tears.

She had cast the curse, waiting for me to beg Her to undo it, to free me from the very thing that called me to Her. I had fought Her with everything I had with teeth, pleas, and prayer. There was terror in her embrace, yes, but there was also warm stillness. She was remaking my body of clay and mud into a sacred relic.

“Why do I fight you?” I spoke to Her.

“Because as a child, you still believe pain is punishment. But this is creation.”

"Who are you?"

"You are the beginning and the end, the milk of the breast you suck on?"

"You're God?"

She laughed as if a child had asked an ignorant question.

"You cannot see past the need for a god and worship, but some have called me a god. Some of my past friends have called me Mother as I nurture your air.

 

Though recently, the hubris of man has forgotten me, rotting my body."

"So why have I been barred to pay the sins of man?"

"You are not meant to repent for their misgiving but be their revelation”.

“What am I to you?”

I breathed in Her scent and let it root in my lungs. My rage no longer roared. It sighed.

“You are my seed. My storm. My becoming.”

And with those words, something inside me broke—then healed. Like a dam giving way not to flood, but to cleanse. Was She not the force that shaped us all—the dark womb of creation and destruction?

She was both the end and the beginning, the soil and the storm, the cradle and the grave. I closed my eyes, trying to steady my racing pulse, but there was no escaping Her. She had consumed my mind, and all that remained was the rasp of Her nails against the ridges of my brain.

“Come with me,” was all the drums of my heart said to me. Who was I to ignore what my body thrummed for? I craved Her, and She craved me just the same.

“Why am I suddenly at your mercy? Do you hold me in the palm of your hand to embrace or to claim me as your own?”

Did I need an answer to the question? I breathed deeply, accepting what She was. She was not my captor; She was the Earth, pulling me into Her embrace—the soil, the sky, the sea. Every part of Her was me, and I was Her. My becoming was not my choice but nature’s will—unstoppable, eternal.

“Make me yours,” I whispered, “as I make you mine.”

“As you wish,” she hummed in my ear—and it felt like a blessing. We moved as one, perfectly attuned. I shed my weakest parts to become the whole: the Earth—the mother.

I knelt by the seaside, the salty air brushing against my skin. The wind stole the petals from my lips, scattering the remnants of my voice across the waves. My knees sank into the damp sand, the grains enveloping my body.

I breathed Her in, taking in the world's stillness, waiting for me. I gazed out at the water, where the waves became one with the land. I closed my eyes, letting the wind and sea lull me into stillness. There, on the edge of the world, I planted myself. My body was no longer my own but something more. It was fertile ground, the cradle of a blossom that would outlast me.

I could feel the Earth breathing through me. The wind sang through my petals. I ripped open the edge of my womb, breaking as easily as soft clay, my ichor the color of the wine of the gods. My aureate tears flowed from the altar of my body, one with the mother who had long awaited my submission.

I was Her chosen child who needed Her cradling arm to wrap around my soul, to be blessed. The entrance of my womb opened for its destiny, a raw, untamable birth. Bouquets poured out of me, a cascade of their resident gold and ivory hues kissed with red vines. It was a sacred offering carved from love and pain. My palms, stained with the Earth’s kiss, trembled.

The scent of decay curled through the air. I had not died. I had flowered into something more. I was finally where I was meant to be, carried by the wind singing Her hymns, no longer caged by flesh, ignorant of Her will as there is no freedom without her blessing. And when the bloom within me opened its eye, I saw not the world, but Her, watching through my body, breathing through my bones.

 

Natalie Gachoka is a Liberian-Kenyan writer from Newark, Delaware. Her work explores Black girlhood, mythic transformation, and the sacred intersections of trauma and rebirth. Rooted in the African diaspora and drawn to the surreal, she writes stories that make space for grief, godhood, and the strange beauty of becoming. She is currently pursuing a joint degree in creative writing and law.