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# Break
- URL: https://dianaludwick.com/break/
- Published: 2026-06-05T17:13:00.000Z
- Updated: 2026-06-05T17:13:00.000Z
- Description: “Break,” a poem on the split screen between before and after becoming a mother, while weighing the consequences of a rift-shorn marriage. Written Friday, June 05, poem 156 in a series of 365 poems written by Diana Ludwick in 2026. Photo: "Break, Robins Egg in Spring" by Diana Ludwick, (c) 2026.
- Author: Diana Ludwick
- Tags: 2026 Poetry Challenge, Long form musings, Poems, Reminiscing, Amniotic fluid, Baby, Bed, Caged, Child, Clarity, Eggs, Emma Thompson, Epoch moment, Free, Husband, Iceberg, June, Love Actually, Motherhood, Parenthood, Pregnancy, Progeny, Scrambled eggs, Toxic, Water Break, #Migrated-1792872215677, #wp, #wp-post, #Import 2026-10-24 20:03

Growing up, I heard women,   
aunties, neighbors, elders,   
my own mom  
speak of their water breaking   
as if an epoch event.  
  
Akin to the day   
President JFK, Jr. was shot:   
"I remember where,   
I remember when."  
"I remember the clothes I wore   
and the shoes I ruined."  
"I made such a scene!"   
  
They spoke of membranes ripping,   
yielding to heavy,   
unpredictable cargo  
as if a precarious shelf   
shearing off an iceberg  
slipping into the sea   
with a deafening crash.   
Of liquids gushing,   
warm and sudden  
fluids flowing down legs,   
foretelling of an imminent arrival.  
  
My own water broke while I was in bed  
in the dark velvet before dawn  
and I knew it, I was already awake  
my mind racing, ruminating,   
on what to do next.  
  
For me, their amniotic sac ruptured   
with a leak not a gush  
giving me time,   
almost too much yet not enough,  
to weigh my opinions  
as I lay awake beside  
my then sleeping, then husband,   
whose dreaming face belied a peace   
that I myself had not felt in years.  
  
Getting up out of bed would be admission   
that this was happening   
that I was to be a mother  
that I would be a co-parent  
that from hereout I would be responsible  
for keeping another human alive   
for the remainder of my existence.  
  
Acknowledging the break   
would also be to sit with the truth  
that I would have to learn how to lie,  
even better than I'd learned to-date.  
That I would have to study up   
on how best to omit, delay,   
soften the edges, dim the lights,   
around the stories   
of this child to-be's day of birth.  
Of why I was already up,   
unable to still my mind or my heart.  
  
Waking him up,   
bringing him in on this journey  
would be a tacit admission   
that I needed him.  
  
That I was too scared to go this alone.  
That I could not see a way forward   
without remaining tethered to him,   
at his side, silently suffering   
all the while praising him publicly.   
  
The weight of these choices  
bore down on me harder than   
the life force clawing their way out of me.  
  
I slipped from bed,   
stole my way to the kitchen,   
my gait stilted and awkward  
like a leashed dog in hot sand.  
  
I went to the fridge,   
retrieved two brown  
Rhode Island Red eggs.  
I broke them into a bowl.  
  
The cracked shells   
revealed translucent membranes,   
taut and firm,   
encasing the gentle slipperiness   
of marigold orange yolk and albumen.  
  
I stared at these broken things  
as I contemplated the break in my water  
in my soul  
in my marriage  
in this house of haunted obscurations.   
  
I made myself forge ahead:  
I selected my inherited wire whisk  
scrambled the pair of once possible life  
poured my mess into a waiting cast iron  
heated and stirred the fat-laced proteins   
until mounds of golden brown curds appeared.  
  
I sat at the the table, in my foraged chair.  
My great-grandparents had bought this  
hefty white oak rectangular dining table   
seventy years prior, to feed their family  
to pass along indefinitely to their progeny.  
  
And there I was,   
running my fingers along the grain,  
staring off far through the woods   
into a horizon I could not see,   
could not will myself to see.  
  
I picked at the egg pebbles,   
forcing myself to gain nourishment   
for the unknowns   
that swiftly mounted in my future.  
  
I placed the mixing bowl and the whisk  
and my dirtied plate and fork  
in the sink basin; washed my hands.  
  
I adjusted the hand towel  
I'd shoved in my pajama bottoms.  
I had found temporary decisioning,   
in lieu of clarity.  
  
I would not be the one   
to break up this lineage.   
This baby would come into a full,   
if shattered, home.  
  
I trudged upstairs,   
where I convinced myself  
to shake my shoulders   
and reset my face  
like Emma Thompson   
in *Love Actually*.  
The character whose actions   
I never understood.  
And who, in each viewing,   
I yelled at the screen:  
"Leave Him!"  
  
It was a film which was,   
in retrospect,  
a hugely toxic movie   
that was my favorite at the time.  
  
Which is how one could   
plausibly sum up   
my own situation   
in this cold empty hallway  
at the break of dawn.  
  
I turned the corner  
into our shared room  
and I sat at the edge of his side  
and I roused him gently.  
"It broke."   
"Hmhhh?" He mumbled.  
  
I sighed out   
from deep inside my lungs   
what remained of my vigor,   
my zest, my fight.  
  
I shrunk, I quieted,   
I contorted.  
Back in this together now,   
for our child.  
  
"My water broke."   
"We're going to be parents!"  
  
My voice broke, then, too,  
as I stiltingly feigned normality.  
Staying caged on the day   
our baby became free.  
That is the epoch moment  
which I carry to this day.